


In Search of Mythical Kings

by copper_dust



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, Canon Compliant, Cardiff, Character Study, Childhood Memories, Chronic Illness, F/M, Family, Fatherhood, Gen, Glasgow, Growing Up, Historical, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Lavenham, Magic, Marriage, Motherhood, Pre-Canon, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-27
Updated: 2018-03-13
Packaged: 2018-04-17 11:01:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 47,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4664115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/copper_dust/pseuds/copper_dust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As a young woman, Hope Howell marries a wizard and chooses to live as a relatively powerless Muggle in a world of magic. Several years later, her life changes forever when her son is attacked by a werewolf. Her journey in the wizarding world gradually evolves from whimsical fantasy to bittersweet reality. Hope describes the joys and challenges she faced: blood prejudice, violence, marital strife, illness, and, of course, raising a little boy named Remus.</p><p>Pottermore and canon-compliant.</p><p>Visit http://8tracks.com/temperaxmental/music-for-mythical-kings to listen to the story soundtrack!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Boggart and a Beginning

_I have flown to star-stained heights_   
_on bent and battered wings_  
_In search of mythical kings, mythical kings_  
_Sure that everything of worth_  
_is in the sky and not the earth_  
_and I never learned to make my way_  
_down, down, down, where the iguanas play_

Dory Previn

* * *

 

If you've never been to Lavenham, Suffolk, then you probably don't know that this eccentrically crooked town—best known for its physics-defying half-timbered Tudor townhouses—is also home to a relatively sizeable proportion of wizards and witches, goblins, elves, ghosts, ghouls and other unpleasant things that go bump in the night. But if you'd walked down the winding streets of this mixed magic-and-Muggle town, you would learn several things. Firstly, you don't need a ruler to become an architect in Lavenham. Secondly, it is sometimes necessary to wear a wool overcoat in England in July. And thirdly, there is a private society of witches and wizards who work tirelessly in secret to renew the age-old gravity-defying charms that protect this town's whimsical architecture from itself. Meanwhile, the Muggle world continues to accept the more sensible explanation for these buildings' continued existence: namely that Lavenham is just different, special and exempt from the laws of physics that apply to the rest of the universe.

 

Even so, you'd never know that one particular room in a ramshackle townhome with dramatically sloping eaves was the site of the most surreal moment of my life‑—and there have been quite a few. I don't want to spoil the story for you, but it wasn't a happy moment, or a moment I enjoy remembering. In fact, it's a source of great sorrow to me, even now. However, there is no denying the profound absurdity of walking into my nearly-five-year-old son's bedroom in the wee hours of a blustery March night, only to find the room half-destroyed, exploded from the inside, the twisted remains of a toy rocket ship lodged in the shattered ceiling plaster, my son's pajamas drenched in blood as he lay unconscious and surrounded by a protective army of tiny plastic soldiers while an enormous bleeding wolf licked his considerable wounds in the far corner. It was a scene few people could forget for quite a number of reasons, but I'll remember it, oddly enough, as the last time I'd stroke my son's silky hair while he slept, bathed in the light of the full moon.

* * *

 

I grew up an ordinary girl in an ordinary family in a boring flat in Aberstwyth. My dad worked for the offices of a textile company and argued with my mam about negotiating with the unions. My mam stayed home and tended to the house, as most mothers did in my corner of the world after the War ended. My dad thought my mam was a bit soft about the unions, probably because she'd had to work in a munitions factory during the War. It had been a bit difficult for her to adjust to returning to housekeeping after the excitement of the War.

 

I was a little kid during the War, only nine when it ended, and I yearned for an adventure of the sort my dad's work friends talked about. Many of them served in the army, or flew planes or volunteered as ARP wardens if they were too old for service. But I spent the War at home, sharing our flat with our cousins from London and my little sister, fighting battles over the bathroom and the butter rations.

 As a teenager, I was driven to travel. I wanted to go tour Europe and visit different countries and become worldly like RAF pilots my dad knew. I did not want to spend my whole life in rainy Aberstwyth, hanging chintzy paintings of the Mediterranean seaside on my walls, just so. It wasn't that I was rebellious, or that I disliked my family—I adored my father and got along well enough with my mother; my twelve-year-old sister looked up to me like a goddess. It was just that I'd spent my childhood reading storybooks with beautiful lithograph illustrations of wonderful, impossible places—fairytale places, imaginary ones—and though I knew they didn't really exist, I wanted to go looking for them anyway. I suppose that at the time, I thought that searching for magic would be almost as good as finding it. My dad, who was a big reader as well, always said I was like a dragonfly living in an anthill. We didn't have loads of money to send me on a trip, but he told me if I found a job abroad, I should take the chance. My sister made me promise to write her and to telephone once every two weeks, which was as often as we could afford a long-distance call.

 Abroad turned out to be Cardiff, but that was alright with me for the time being. I know, I know—you probably want to get to the interesting parts, with magic wands and explosions. They are coming, I promise! In Cardiff, I found work as a kindergarten teacher's assistant, and later on, at an insurance office. Every morning I put on a starched white blouse and a navy blue skirt, a pearl brooch and my going-away present: a lumpy ball of amber on a gold chain. An ancient beetle was trapped inside the amber, glinting greenish and gold when I held the stone up to the light. Later, I would take the amber off the chain and wrap it in a soft felt cloth, pressing the bundle into my son's hand before he went off to sleep away from his parents for the very first time. I thought about the beetle a lot after he left, wanting to imagine that it was watching over him, preserving him, keeping my Remus whole and still and unchanging as a relic; all those things he couldn't be.

 Can you tell that I worry about him, still? He's much older and a great deal stronger than his father and I thought he would ever be, but he is still my little boy and I am still his mam, lost to him though I may be. If you see him, please tell him that, and also to eat more vegetables. I am concerned about his diet. But I digress.

Working in Cardiff was an adventure unto itself. I lived at a ladies' boarding house with a curfew of ten o'clock. My bedroom was in the attic; though it was freezing cold in the winter, I had chosen it for the beautiful Queen Anne-style bay window. It looked out onto the back garden of the Hound and Crown, a pub that leaked drunken banter and live jazz late into the night. Most evenings, we ate meals at the communal dining room. We ate on a weekly schedule. Monday—fried cod, cabbage and leeks. Tuesday—bread and butter, carrot soup and beans. Wednesday—a cawl, ingredients variable, flavour somewhat dicey. The food was nothing special, but I was on my own (almost) for the first time and I loved stepping out of the house in the morning, just before the sun rose, wearing my black patent shoes and feeling entirely adult. In the evenings, I would write poems longhand in my journal, or go to the movies with my fellow secretaries and clerks. I had a vivid social life, many friends and potential beaus, but I wasn't particularly close to any of them. I enjoyed gossiping with the girls from the office or going to the pub and giggling, flush-drunk on a single beer. I went on double dates to the theatre and always arrived home at a respectable hour. In truth, I had little interest in seriously dating. I suppose I fancied that in travelling the world, I'd meet an exotic man from a foreign country and we'd have a whirlwind romance and then part at a train station or a port and I would move on, searching, never settling. What I wanted was not something that could be defined, nor could I visualize anything but the blurred outlines of my desire, the negative space surrounding it coloured by yearning. One February in 1958, I described it in my notebook as "nostalgia for the future, or excitement about something impossibly ancient." I was a bit of a sap then, as I am now. Remus and his father would roll their eyes at me, but they didn't understand. They were born into this terrible, wonderful world; I chose it.

* * *

I liked to take long walks by myself. It wasn't the most well-advised thing to do, as my mother took care to remind me, being young and female and incredibly prone to falling into daydreams so vivid that I walked into low-hanging branches. She told me that if I wanted to experience nature so badly, I ought to find a nice group of girls my age with a real naturalist to lead us on a tour. I took this advice to heart, and then I took that part of my heart and placed it in a dusty drawer somewhere in my mind and promptly forgot about the drawer.

There was a farm not far outside the city where you could buy fresh honey and apples still waxy and dirt-speckled and other types of produce, depending on the season. I went to this farm occasionally and would buy a fruit and some biscuits in a brown paper bag, then set off to walk through the neighbouring woods. It was a half-hour walk from the pumpkin patch to the sloping valley where the trees took over from the grass. It was one autumn, still early enough that the trees were just spotted with orange and green, that I walked into this wood and, waiting until I was fully concealed from the farm, pulled off my shoes and stockings. I carried a pair of comfortable socks in my saddle bag and put them on. I didn't want to tear my stockings on a bramble, or get them covered in dirt, but the real reason I took them off was simply that I hated wearing them.

The day was bright but bitten by a customarily British chill. I wore a cable-knit cardigan, but my legs soon became cold. Stopping by a hazel tree, I sat down on the blanket of leaves and heather to rub some warmth back into my legs. The translucent canopy of leaves above me glowed emerald green. I felt momentarily overcome by a strange energy. I did not mean to say anything, though I felt my mouth open and my throat tighten as if I were at loss for words. My pink knees, socked feet and loafers blurred into a haze in my peripheral vision. I was aware that the forest was not totally silent, yet I could hear nothing at all. It was neither a pleasant nor unpleasant feeling, just a queer one, as though life had paused and the world dissolved into nothing, save the black branches webbed with strands of sunlight overhead.

It lasted probably a minute at most before I remembered myself again, and went back to feeling the chill in my exposed calves. The sound returned-- just gentle birdcalls and drifting leaves ruffling in the breeze, the snap of a squirrel's leap from twig to twig. I don't know if it was a premonition or the breeching of some ward or just a moment of confusion. Later on, I'd ask the few wizards I knew if it sounded like anything they knew of; none could say definitively if it was related to magic, but all advised me to ask someone more knowledgeable. I never found anyone who claimed to understand what the feeling was.

After the feeling went away, I pushed myself up off the mossy ground and set out down what passed for a path. It was a winding trail of trodden earth, the branches and brambles mostly stepped on or kicked away by horses. The light played off the changing leaves and breaks in the foliage, casting flickers of gold and crimson onto the tree trunks. I stopped for a moment and reached into my bag for my notebook, thinking to make some quick notes about the scene around me, possibly for a future poem. A branch creaked behind me. I looked up, saw nothing, and assumed it was a squirrel or a stronger gust of wind. As I pulled out my pencil, I heard another sound. At first, I thought of a horse chuffing air through its nose; it sounded like heavy breathing. I looked up again and craned my neck around. Nothing. As soon as I began to jot down some words in my notebook, the sound started again; breathing, but coming closer and closer to me. A strange chill fluttered up and down my spine. I began walking briskly away, hoping that it was merely a curious rabbit in the underbrush. The sound followed me. Footsteps. It was definitely a person; the breathing had taken on the ragged quality of a man jogging. I broke into a run, dropping my pencil onto the ground. My bag whipped back and forth, slamming me in the hips. I glanced back and saw a hunching black shape and a pale hand reaching forth, coming closer. There was a finger missing—possibly two. I gulped, and nearly slammed into a tree.

I managed to make it around the tree, but so did the person chasing me. It reached out and I tried to leap forward, but I felt it make contact with my skirt, grabbing a handful of fabric and jerking me back. A scream escaped me, and I heard a second set of footsteps approaching, also running. The sky and ground reversed themselves; I fell backwards as the decrepit figure pulled me to the ground. The air was pungent with the stench of stale tobacco, sulfur and gasoline. A terror seized me like none other; I would not experience that kind of fear again until that bright, terrible night in Lavenham.

By the next day, I would remember it as the best day of my life.

* * *

A man shouted something I couldn't quite make out. The smell disintegrated and I felt the hand release my skirt. I stood up; the decrepit stranger seemed to have run away, though I never heard any footsteps and it had happened awfully quickly. Relief flooded into my clenched stomach.

"Was it—are you alright?"

A young man I hadn't noticed stepped out from between two arcing trees. His brow was furrowed with concern. In one hand, he carried a short stick that tapered towards the end.

"Oh, yes," I breathed, "but that was awful. I go on walks here often, but I've never come across a—a _creep_ like that!" I brushed flakes of dried leaves off my knees and looked up at him. "I don't know how to thank you for chasing him off. I tried to run, but he was faster than he looked."

"Well, it was only a Boggart," he said sheepishly.

"A what?"

The corners of his mouth flickered, almost as if to smile. "A Boggart... a tramp. You know."

 "But he was going to kill me!"

 "Well, most of them are quite harmless, but this one..." He seemed to notice my apprehension. "This one was insane! Maybe violent. But he's gone now," he added firmly.

 "I hope so," I said, nervously peering around the nearby tree trunks. "D'you think he might try to come back?"

 "I, er don't expect so, but...he might. I suppose it's better to be safe than sorry." He glanced down at his blue plaid tie. I noticed then that he was dressed more like an academic than a young man on a hike in the countryside. His jacket was nubby wool, his dress trousers somewhat short on him.

"I'm not sure what to do," I said. "I don't know if I should just keep going, or..."

 "Maybe I ought to walk you to the road?" he piped up, blushing a sweet shade of peach. "If you have an, er, a lift home?"

 "I took the bus. It's a mile down from the farmhouse, about forty-five minutes. Did you take a car?"

 He shook his head and dipped his hands into his pockets. "No, I just ap—I walked, also. Took another route, but yours sounds quicker," he said with an awkward grin. "If you'd like, I could walk with you to your bus stop...just in case, you know, it, I mean _, he_ might think differently if we're two instead of one."

 "Oh, would you please? I'm not usually this nervous about the woods, you know, I come here all the time—"

 "I understand," he said graciously. "Can't be too careful." I joined him in step as we traced my path back through the trees. He was tall, but walked deliberately slowly so that our strides would match.

"So, were you taking a walk as well?" I asked.

Actually, I came out here to take notes on, er, the wildlife," he said. "It's my job."

 "Oh, are you a researcher?"

 "Something like that," he said.

"And you study animals?"

 "Of a sort, yes."

"How lovely," I breathed. "I would so like to have a job that required taking long walks in the forest. I mean...except for today, of course."

His laughter reminded me of an old book's softly ruffling pages. "It's not all exploring in the woods. I have to write papers and do demonstrations and the like. That's not as much fun."

I wondered at what exactly a "demonstration" of zoology was, but I tucked the thought away. "I'm just a filing clerk at an insurance office. It's very dull, if you can imagine."

"Really," he said. "That surprises me."

 "I thought everybody found filing dull. I've certainly never met anybody who particularly enjoyed it."

 "No, no," his laughter ruffled again. "I meant...well, I suppose _you_ don't seem dull."

 I glanced at him sideways; he was blushing.

 "I hope I'm not," I said. "It would be a terrible existence, not only to work in a dull office but to _be_ dull one's self. See, I could handle one without the other. A filing job isn't so bad when you've got an imagination to keep you occupied, and I suppose a life of adventure would distract me from having none, but to live without an imagination or any excitement at all would be a nightmare."

 "Hmm," he murmured. "But you wouldn't know you were dull, would you? I mean, you wouldn't know what you were missing."

 "I wonder," I said. I reached down to hitch up my stockings and remembered with a stir of embarrassment that I had taken them off. Had he noticed? We had barely met, but I didn't want him to think poorly of me.

 "So your job, in research? Its not dull, isn't it?"

He paused to pluck a yellowing leaf off a low-hanging branch. "Well...no, I'd say not. I like my work. I get to travel sometimes."

"Where have you been?"

"Not too far. Mostly all over Britain, but I've done a few European assignments. The furthest I've ever had to go was Transnistria, in Romania."

"See any vampires?" I asked jokingly.

He opened his mouth, closed it and then paused.

 "I just meant, like Dracula, you know," I said.

He smiled. "Yes. Of course. All over the place. The country's lousy with them; there aren't enough coffins, so they've got to sleep underneath the futon."

"What a dreadful thought," I moaned. "To spend your eternal life taking naps under a sofa bed. The Welsh would never stand for it, I'll tell you."

"Well, they don't always—" he began, and then stopped. He gave me a queer look. I wondered whether he had noticed my bare legs.

"I just realized I haven't got your name," he said softly.

"And I haven't gotten yours, and I really ought to have asked, given that you just saved my life." He smiled at that. His eyes crinkled up behind his tortoiseshell glasses and I noticed their colour for the first time, a soft almond flecked with gold.

"Lyall Lupin. And you are—"

"Hope Caron Howell, but you can just call me Hope."

 "I will," he said and reached forward to shake my hand; his was smooth and warm in my own. That was the first time we ever touched and for many years afterward I would hold the sensation of Lyall's soft, un-callused palm close within my mind, a talisman of something gentle and lovely, a balloon of joy to float us through the sea of pain to come.

* * *

 

When we reached the bus stop, he paused for a moment, toying with the lowest button of his shirt. I smiled up at him.

"I, er, I actually meant to take this bus as well," he said apologetically. "I have an office in the city."

"Oh, where do you work?" I asked, combing my hair with my fingers unknowingly. It was a habit my mother had tried to train out of me, but I couldn't help but do it when I was nervous or excited or in this case, a little bit of both.

 "It's a shared office. I've just got a bit of a closet in the corner with a desk. A—a government office. Commissions research for the preservation of the...endangered species of, er...Wales."

"I do think they ought to stop driving all the roe deer out of the forests," I said. "I think it's tragic, what's happening to all the wildlife in Britain. There's almost none left, for starters. Not that I know much about it," I added quickly, for his expression had changed from pleasant to amused, his eyebrows having quirked up just a tad. "I just think people take it for granted that they can go for a walk and hear birds, or go deer stalking every fall and it's never going to change. I mean, I have this argument with my father all the time. He doesn't hunt, but his friends from the RAF..."

I chattered on like this for the best part of our bus ride. I sat in a seat facing the bus's interior and he stood before me, holding onto a pole with one hand and his briefcase with the other.

 Finally, I recognized the soot-stained bricks of my neighbourhood. I must have missed the announcement of my street. I hurriedly pulled the cord to request my stop; Lyall noticed.

"This is you?" he said. He glanced out the window. His expression looked somewhat pinched.

"Coming up, yes," I said, somewhat embarrassed by the state of the houses. "It's—not the fanciest of areas. It's a boarding house."

"Oh—yes, of course—" he stammered, "I was actually—I think it's a perfectly nice street," he added. "You've got all your things with you, then?"

"Yes, thanks" I stood up and patted down the wrinkles in my skirt. "I just wanted to thank you for everything—you saved my life! I'm tremendously grateful."

Lyall's eyes crinkled up as he smiled. "No need, no need. It was only the decent thing—"

"I only wish there was something I could do to repay you."

He looked at me askance, then down at his shoes, then back up at me.

"Actually," said Lyall carefully, "I, er, well I'm not from here, as you can probably tell by my accent—I mean, not from Cardiff, anyway, and if it's not too much trouble, I'd like it if you could perhaps show me around the high street and, er...if you'd like to meet for tea or something..."

"Oh," I blushed. "That would be very nice. Not that I know _too_ much about the city, but...I'll give you my telephone number..."

"Oh, that's alright," he said hurriedly, "My telephone is broken at the moment. Perhaps we could meet this Saturday afternoon at your corner, around, say, four o'clock"

I briefly wondered why he couldn't just use a tollbooth, but my thoughts were interrupted when the bus stopped at my corner and we lurched forward. Lyall dropped his briefcase and hurriedly picked it up. When he bent over, I noticed a carved wooden stick poking out of his pocket, like a pencil with no eraser or lead. When he straightened up, he noticed me looking and rearranged his coat to cover his pocket.

"Well, I suppose, we're here."

"Yes. Thank you very much. I do need to get going, but let me thank you again—"

 "Of course," he said. "Well, it was no trouble at all. None. So, Saturday then, at this corner—"

"Yes," I said, unable to help myself from smiling. He smiled back, his grin just a twitching of the corners of his mouth and wrinkling at his eyes. "Goodbye, Lyall. See you soon."

When I returned to the boarding house, one of the matrons, Mrs. Wyeth, noticed me smiling. She raised an eyebrow."Had a nice time, Miss Howell?"

"Yes. Lovely weather," I blurted before rushing upstairs to my room. I shut the door and fell onto my bed and burst out laughing, long and hard, for what felt like no reason at all.


	2. Blevin's Tea

I met Lyall that Saturday afternoon. A light drizzle speckled the pavement. I was slightly late, having gotten quite caught up in a novel I was reading, and I apologized to him.

"Quite alright," he said. "I expected you were a bit hesitant to come out in the rain, but I see you have an umbrella. I never remember to take mine."        

"I usually don't either," I admitted, "but I didn't want to go out to a restaurant with my hair all drenched."

We walked a few blocks to a street with quaint little shops and cafes. Cardiff wasn't the most cosmopolitan of cities, but it still felt more sophisticated than Aberstwyth. I told Lyall all about growing up on the coast, about my sister and my college. He was quiet and solemn-seeming but his expression flickered with mirth whenever I exaggerated about the bureaucratic paper storm that was my workplace. How I missed that life, later on—living in the city, going to dances, never fearing for my own protection. I suppose that's how my father felt after the war, but I could not have understood at the time.

Lyall took me to a small, cramped cafe called Blevin's Tea, located a half-storey below ground. It was accessible by a narrow set of crooked stone steps leading down from the pavement. I never would have even noticed it from the street, had he not known about it. Remus has long since grown bored with hearing the story, but I can't help but describe the decor again for your sake. Glowing aquariums lined the walls, but inside them were no fish, nor water; it was as though a miniature world was contained in each tank. Tiny townhouses, their chimneys no thicker than crochet hooks, were lined up on roads cobbled with stones like coarse grains of sand. Both cars and horses pulling carts passed on the roads. There were little factories, some with smokestacks pouring actual smoke; even tiny rubbish bins and a few run-down houses with caved-in roofs.

"Oh my," I whispered, leaning over one tank to look inside. There was no lid on any tank; they were entirely open on top. "May I touch it?"

"Erm, I don't think so," Lyall said uncomfortably. "I think it's just for show."      

"Look at the horses! They're actually walking! It doesn't look like they're on wheels... Do you know how it works?"

Lyall shrugged sheepishly, though there was a glint in his eyes. "I can't make more than a guess."       

"Maybe it's electric? Something with a radio signal?" I asked.

He merely smiled and brought two menus to a round coffee table with two chairs, one poufy and wing-backed, the other small and wooden. Lyall eyed the poufy chair and then sat down on the hard one. He spread the menus out on the table and straightened them into a neat column.           

"Baked apples...I don't think I've had one since I was a child," I said.

"Now's then the time, then,"

"I don't know," I blushed, "it's an awful lot to eat at this time in the afternoon, with ice cream on the side."

"I might be able to help you with that, if it's a problem." He looked serious, all stiff upper lip and knotted tie, but there was a crinkling at the corners of his eyes that betrayed him.

 "Now that you mention it," I said, "I don't think it will be. Excuse me, sir—" I flagged down the waiter, a silver-haired man in a violently purple smoking jacket.

"All set, then?" He addressed Lyall, as if I wasn't there.

"Yes, thank you, Demosthenes. A cup of ginger tea and, er—" Lyall shot me a questioning glance. I nodded at him. "Two cups of tea and a baked apple with ice cream, please."

"Certainly," said the waiter, with a curt bow.

"And two spoons please," I added, but Demosthenes ignored me, retreating to the kitchen. I felt more puzzled then offended, not knowing as I do now why he would treat me not so much with disdain, but as if I simply didn't exist. Being young and female, I was unused to invisibility, of either the magical or mundane variety. Later on, it was little Remus, only three or four at the most, who noticed the small slights—the unanswered questions, condescendingly worded greetings—and asked, in the innocently blunt manner of a child, "Mammy, why don't the magic people want to talk to you?"

Lyall, however, was unusually attentive. I chattered on about this and that—my job, my few friends in Cardiff, the loneliness I'd felt upon moving out to Cardiff on my own—and despite how colourless, how utterly _boring_ I sounded to myself, he smiled and nodded at all the right bits, occasionally asking me questions. He listened to my answers with a slightly furrowed brow, as though he was thinking hard about everything I said. I hardly noticed when the tea and baked apple arrived on mismatched china.

Lyall took a fork and what looked to be an exceedingly dull butter knife and neatly sliced the baked apple in half in one clean motion.

"You can have this side," he said, "it's got more caramel anyways."

"Oh, that's alright—if you want—"

"Don't mind that," he said briskly. "I'm sorry—I forgot to ask for a second plate. Why don't you start in and I'll ask the waiter for an extra?"

"Oh, that's alright," I giggled nervously. "We can share the plate." My cheeks grew warm after I said that—it hadn't seemed as strange until I realized that Lyall was nearly a stranger to me. Yet, his presence already felt familiar enough.

"Are you sure?" asked Lyall as he straightened his dark blue tie and spread a napkin on his lap neatly.

"Yes. Yes, if you don't mind, I mean."

He replied by taking a spoonful of ice cream and turning the spoon upside down in his mouth. "Hmm. Excellent choice."

"I've got such a sweet tooth," I murmured, "it's really terrible."

"Better sweet than sour. I can't stand sour."

"No? What about buttermilk?"

Lyall shook his head somberly. "Absolutely not. My mother tried foisting that on me when I was a child. She learned very quickly not to do that." He looked serious, though his gaze was gentle, fixated on mine.

I laughed and ate a heaping spoonful of my dessert. "What about sour cream, then? Surely you must eat sour cream?"

"Never." He was telling the absolute truth, I later learned. It wasn't that sour foods made him sick—he just disliked them. Lyall chose not to eat foods he disliked and when he chose not to do something, he _never_ did it. Like copper wire, the more you hammered at him, the more unyielding he became.

 (Naturally, when I was expecting Remus, all I craved was sour cream and sour apple candies.)

"I'm not too picky," I explained. "I like mostly everything, which is just as well since I'm a lousy cook."

"Now, I find that hard to believe."

"That I'm not picky?"

He shook his head and brushed a single stray hair on his forehead back into its place. "That your cooking is lousy. I'm more inclined to believe you're being modest."

I smiled despite myself. "Now, how would you know that? You've never had my burnt omelettes?"

"Call it, er, intuition." He gave me a swift grin and then ate a large forkful of baked apple dipped in melting ice cream. A dribble of ice cream was forming at the corner of his lip, but he took a napkin and quickly wiped it off before I could say anything.

"Well, your intuition is wrong in this case, but I know what you mean. When I know something, there's hardly a reason for it. I just _know_. Do you understand what I'm—well, of course you do." I sipped my tea. The ginger was strong, but it tasted wonderful.

"Erm. I wouldn't say that I usually believe things without reason. I suppose it's a kind of cynicism, but I'm probably less intuitive than, er...practical."

"Oh?"

"Not that there's anything wrong with intuition," he added quickly. "Some people have great facility that way."

"Oh, definitely. My sister is very clever, but she thinks in leaps and bounds—nobody can follow her train of thought but her."

Lyall was tracing his spoon around his saucer idly, leaving a trail of melted ice cream in its wake. "Yes," he said softly, his brow slightly tensed in thought. "Sounds like a good friend of mine."

My expression must have soured at that, because Lyall finished his ice cream in one spoonful and sat forward, his chair squealing in protest against the ancient wood floor.

"Shall we get the cheque?"

"Oh—yes, I think so. If you're finished..."

He made eye contact with Demosthenes and neither of them said a word, but Lyall seemed satisfied that the message had been sent. Demosthenes lumbered over to a counter and wrote out a receipt with a dripping fountain pen

 "Well, I hope I haven't kept you too long," I said, folding my hands into my lap. "Weekends are so short, I find."

"I'm in no hurry," he said amiably. He looked at me, but the reflection of lamplight in his glasses made it hard to probe his gaze. "Unless you have somewhere to be, in which case—"

"Oh, no. No, I haven't," I backtracked.

Demosthenes arrived with the cheque and placed it on the table. With the tips of all five fingers, he pushed it unceremoniously to Lyall, who took out his wallet. I took the cheque and opened my clutch.

"Don't worry about that," he said.

"Oh, but it's the least I could do," I insisted. "You saved my life."

"And you have already repaid me as I asked." He spilled a few coins out of his pocketbook, counting them. Some of them looked unusual—probably foreign. I wished I could travel so often that my money was all mixed up with foreign cash.

"No, don't—please," I said, taking the cheque away from him. "I'm very grateful and it's just a very small gesture."

"It wouldn't feel right." He fell silent and looked through the window at our side. The view was of crooked steps and cobblestones. Then he added, "But if it makes you feel better, then go ahead and I will buy lunch next time."

A pregnant pause lasted the length of my swallowing.

"If there is a next time, I mean," he said more softly.

"I hope so." I had spoken aloud before my mind had formulated a response. Or so it seemed.

"Hope," murmured Lyall. Then, more melodically, he repeated my name, contemplating the word as if he had never heard it before. "You must always be hopeful."

"I am." I placed my fourteen shillings on the table and Demosthenes appeared and disappeared with it almost instantaneously.

 "I'm sorry, that was terribly obvious. I am slightly ashamed—you must have heard that so many times."

I laughed. "Yes, Lyall," I said, smiling. "But not from you."


	3. Wormwood Punch

After this part of the story, the version Remus heard was condensed, folded like an accordion to fit neatly into a child's narrative. It was a song altered as my audience changed: the little boy under the big afghan, the boy in the blood-stained pajamas, the boy who still listened on my lap, the boy who could almost fit.

He was always patient when I showed him pictures from our wedding album again, a gift wrapped in blue linen and stamped with the words "Mr. and Mrs. Lyall Lupin." We had some extra pages, which we filled with baby pictures, and there it ended on Remus's face, gleefully chewing on a toy rabbit on his first birthday. Remus was very gracious about his being the culmination of both his parents' lives, the zenith of our accomplishments and gravitational centre of our universe. As he grew older, his humility increased to the extent that Remus could sometimes pretend for up to three full days that his father and I shared equal billing on the marquee of our collective soul. It is a child's privilege to live this way; and Remus deserves this privilege more than most, for he has none outside of our shared kingdom. But I think you know that this picture album is really the abridged version of a novel, and something tells me that you have read a book, or two, or seven; so I will tell you now about _my_ story. Think of it as an addendum to your Professor Lupin's biography—how a teacher was taught. How awfully long I've waited to share this with someone new—someone who wasn't there, who won't interrupt me with their own version. How relieving it is to share a burden with a friend.

* * *

My formal position at the insurance office was as an assistant typist, under the lead of our head secretary, a stout woman called Mrs. Morris. She had fingers like bullets and could batter away at two keyboards at once, as well as take notes in shorthand at the rate of a barrister's speech. Trained as a court stenographer, Mrs. Morris had had to retire from her old job when she had her children, back in the '30s, only to be called to the Home Office to take dictation from Rab Butler Himself when the war broke out and all the top secretaries were 'gobbled up' (her words, not mine) by the War Cabinet. Her effectiveness and efficiency were somewhat frightening and left me and my fellow assistant typists with only the most medial of tasks to perform. I brewed a lot of coffee, made carbon copies, telephoned secretaries at other offices and took messages between actuaries and lawyers and more stiff-collared professionals. The job was obscenely dull, but it left ample room in my mind for more colourful adventures. I was working on a novel entirely in my head, one with about thirty characters and a labyrinthine plot which solidified gradually over a period of months spent putting rejection-of-claims letters into envelopes. Mr. Talbot, an older man who worked as a claims adjuster in a cluttered office, called me Caer, after the Irish goddess of dreams. I didn't mind; it was a nickname that suited me, especially since it sounded like my middle name, Caron. What didn't suit me was the actual work—it was of no interest to me, no challenge and I possessed no aptitude for it. After I met Lyall, I found myself envying him for his job, which sounded exciting and whimsical compared to my own.

Lyall spared few details about his work after our first meeting, except to apologize for seeming stressed about upcoming 'conferences,' or to complain about his unstructured schedule, which sounded just ideal to me (his research was completed independently; he was both always and never 'on the job.') My imagination filled in the details, elaborating on exactly what sort of animals he worked with, and all the far-away places he travelled to. Of course, nothing I dreamed up ever came close to his _actual_ work, but at the time, it didn't occur to me to question Lyall's reticence about his job. He was a private person; that much was clear from our first meeting. I knew few details about his education, his ambitions, his passions and aversions. The mystery appealed to me—at least, it did back then. When he did offer an unsolicited tidbit of biographical information—a snapshot of a childhood memory or admission of some guilty pleasure—I felt as though I'd found a crumb of gold in the sand. I kept each gold crumb close to me, as though if I collected enough, I might be able to build a glittering castle in the sand.

 Some of my more senior colleagues were well-paid, but I was young and only half-competent and drew a very modest income from my job. It was enough to cover my room and board at Saint Dwnwyn's House (I got a real laugh out of Lyall's pitiable attempts to sound out the name phonetically), bus fare and basic expenses, but there was little left over after that for recreation. I wish I could say that I lived modestly within my means, but I was twenty-two and often spent my last few shillings on a new lipstick or lace gloves, opting instead to forgo some necessity or other—like proper laundry detergent. My father delighted in telling all our relatives about how independent I was, financially and otherwise, yet I still found unsolicited cheques in the mail slipped under my door. I didn't feel too badly about the cheques—my father was soft, and to deny these gifts would injure his pride, of which he had far more than me.

It embarrasses me to admit that, in those days, it was easiest to rely on the interest and resultant kindness of men to fund my trips to the movies, to the museum or to the kind of homey pubs which, only upon exiting to fresh air, did you notice the stench hosted within. I had a few suitors when I began working at the insurance office, but after three or so months I had endured awkward dinners with all the young accountants and actuaries I worked for. My real friends were mostly back in Aberystwyth, and the office girls I ate my bagged lunch with were no better off than me. My sojourn with Lyall to Blevin's Tea was my first restaurant meal in several months—and when I took the cheque away from him, I did _genuinely_ want to pay. Yes, there were plenty of times in the past when I made disingenuous motions to unfold my pocketbook, content in the knowledge that the gesture would interrupted immediately by my generous companions, but that wasn't one of them. As far as I knew, Lyall and I were not on a date; I felt indebted to him and it gnawed at me. Of course, I told myself it was because he had saved my life and just think of if he hadn't stepped in, et cetera, but here is the truth: I liked him and I didn't want him to think poorly of me.

* * *

"I don't think so," said Lyall, when I asked him whether I should bring an umbrella on our walk. He was waiting patiently a few metres from my front steps, dressed as usual in a three-piece suit made out of some nubby tweed that looked extremely warm for the mild weather. I joined him on the pavement and we set off for the bay. I thought Lyall might like to see all the boats docked at the waterfront. He told me on our last outing that he was from a landlocked little town in Lancashire and had never lived in a city by the sea before. I had never lived anywhere else.

 The clouds were drawn together somewhat ominously, but Lyall seemed unconcerned. It was not the prettiest part of the city, where I lived; what used to be lovely old Edwardian townhouses had been chopped up into a ramshackle mix of shops, flats, dinghy rooming houses and pubs. The bricks were soot-stained, the hanging signs lined with rust.

"Do you want to take the bus?" I offered.

"I thought it was a fifteen minute walk," he said cordially.

"It is. But it's...not as pleasant a walk, this part of he city. Trust me, I live here."

"I trust you." He peered down at me through his spectacles. "But I walked all the way here and it was nice enough on my own."

"And now?" 

He looked straight ahead. "It's a nice walk, as I said."

We continued along a winding street that sloped gently downhill. I picked my way carefully around the cracks in the sidewalk, mindful of my kitten heels. Lyall noticed that I had slowed down, and he adjusted his pace to match.

"Sorry about this. It's just these shoes—well," I said to his smirk, "they're very practical indoors. I can't wear plimsolls around everywhere."

"Of course not," he said dryly. In his glasses, I saw only my short, clipped fringe and upturned face.

"You don't own any plimsolls, do you?"

"No."

"You don't own rubber boots either."

"No."

"Sandals."

"I don't see the point, for someone like myself."

The salty-brine scent of the bay was drifting towards us on the breeze. I spotted several men in greying caps arguing outside a sandwich shop. A woman with a plastic scarf around her hair pushed a pram past us with two babies in it. 

"What do you wear in the snow, then?" I asked.

"These," he said, nodding at his brown leather dress shoes. The uppers of his shoes were slightly cracked with wear, but both shoes were spotless, and polished to a mirror finish.

"And on the beach?"

He finally allowed himself a chuckle. "Either these shoes, or barefoot. I'd feel very odd in anything else."

"You _are_ odd," I blurted out, without thinking. Immediately, I a bubble of embarrassment well up in my chest. "I mean—that's not how I meant to—it was very rude of me..."

"It's true," he said lightly.

"No, don't take it that way," I stammered. 

"No harm done. I'm well-acquainted with my idiosyncrasies."

"Not everyone is," I said. "And most people—well, I don't think they'd admit to having any."

He thought for a few seconds. "I'm not aware of anyone without their own habits. I suppose it's like hearing your own accent, though."

"What accent?" I asked innocently.

He looked at me as though I were an invention he'd never seen before, of which he couldn't discern the purpose.

"You're making fun," Lyall murmured. "You'd made fun of me twice already today. I ought to catch up."

"I thought you'd take advantage of my ridiculous shoes, for a start."

"No, no. I wouldn't choose something like that, it's er, it's...what's the word..."

I waited for him to finish, suspending the grin that wanted to spread across my face.

"Prosaic," he decided. "Hackneyed. And so forth. No, I am going to wait until you aren't expecting it."

"I'll expect it, then."

"You'll forget."

"I won't," I insisted playfully.

He lowered his voice as we passed under a banner hung that over the street, announcing our arrival at Cardiff Bay.

"I'm very patient." And he was.

* * *

Autumn slowly deflated into winter. In the backyard of the Hound and Crown, the leaves didn't fall off the birch tree that had long-ago been cleaved into a V by a lightning strike; they just sort of disappeared one morning, to be replaced by flurries the same colour as its bark. I was writing an awful lot in my journal, and crossing out much of it. Returning to my journal several days after an outing with Lyall was an exercise in humility; when we parted, I was filled with a fluid energy, happy and agitated in equal measure. It wasn't mere interest in our budding friendship, but a kind of dissatisfaction with my life as it was, in general. Lyall lived on his own; his mysterious career was evidently very fulfilling to him and had some type of trajectory. At that time, I didn't know what exactly about me interested him, but part of his appeal to me was something I only understood years later; a complicated envy. His appearance and general demeanour were mundane to a nearly exaggerated degree, yet it only served to remind me of my first glimpse of him; stepping out calmly from behind a tree and into the sunlight, briefcase in hand, half a second after vanquishing my stalker.

Then things would settle down and I would return to normal, having gone some time without speaking to him, and all the thoughts I had spilled messily into my journal would seem simpering and ridiculous. It is one thing to be humiliated in the presence of another person, but even more pathetic to be humiliated only with one's self. My job was perfectly reasonable for someone of my education level; I was lucky enough to be able to afford a room in a very decent, respectable boarding house, and if I couldn't put a name to the strange fits of longing I experienced, then they obviously weren't very important.

I was trying to save enough money to go to night classes; I wanted to study music. It wasn't that I thought I could make a career of it, but I had long since loved my music lessons back in school. In Aberystwyth, I had played oboe in my school's band. As a child, during the war, my sister and I received piano lessons from a young woman who had been a student in a conservatory in Antwerp, but had fled to England, and then Wales right before the occupation. I didn't know it then, but the piano lessons were her method of payment for my maternal grandparents' kindness in letting her board with them. She moved on from their home when I was eight years old, in '44 and I never saw her again.

I recounted the story to Lyall one evening, when we had gone to see a jazz quartet play at a pub he liked. He told me he'd been to Antwerp, on a work trip. Apparently his work involved studying "migration patterns" in animals. What sort of animals? "European" ones. Remus never got tired of hearing stories about how naive I was, to believe Lyall's cover stories. He grew up with magic; its prevalence was as obvious to him as plumbing and electricity (though he enjoyed it a great deal more as a young child.) But Lyall had an enigmatic personality and he was very reserved; I liked that about him. He never evaded a question or seemed offended by my curiosity; in fact, my occasional inquisitiveness would elicit a wry smile.

"Do you drink?" I asked that night at the pub, as he ordered a plain soda.

"Sometimes," he said. We were sitting in one of the darkest corners of the room, the closest niche we could find to the musicians without being entirely unable to hear ourselves converse.

"I only ask because I thought—well, I thought you'd order a beer, or something."

He toyed with a paper coaster. "I didn't think it...polite."

"How so?"

He took a long breath and glanced over at the saxophonist, his gaze travelling over my head completely. "I was taught," he said, "it isn't right to do that if your companion is not going to drink. Particularly if it's, er, with a girl. That's what I was told, anyway," he added quickly. "Is that not the custom here?"

"I don't know." I blushed without embarrassment, for it was too dim in the pub for anyone else to tell. "I don't mind if you want to have a drink."

"It's quite alright," he said, "I'm not, well, I'm not very familiar with this place."

"What do you mean?"

Two little Tiffany chandeliers floated before me, reflected once on each lens of his glasses.

"I don't know what they've got here to drink," he said. "No menu."

"Doesn't every pub have the same thing?" I laughed. "I mean, I've never been to one with a _menu_..."

"No—of course not," he said curtly. The chandeliers waved back and forth as he shook his head. "But it's an, er, a regional thing, and I'm not from here..."

"Ah." I let it go, though I was pretty sure English pubs were exactly the same Welsh ones, at least when it came to the basics. I suppose I thought perhaps he _didn't_ drink, and was embarrassed to admit it, for some reason. There were few young men I knew who didn't claim eminence in holding their liquor.

We stopped speaking to watch the musicians play for a long while. Every so often a couple would walk past them, cutting off our view. Men in unbuttoned overcoats pulled their girlfriends by the hand. Bobby-pinned curls bounced in and out of view as the cymbals trembled an anxious buzz. 

I turned back to the table to sip my iced tea and noticed Lyall quickly averting his gaze. He seemed on edge.

"Having a nice time?" I asked.

"Yes, of course."

"Really?" 

"Do you not like the music?" he said.

"No, it's lovely," I insisted. "I like to watch them play. The one in the middle—"

"What is he, tuba?"

"No, no," I giggled, "That's a French horn. But I like the drums."         

"Hm." 

I noticed his fingers fold and unfold over a crumpled piece of paper. He noticed me looking at it and casually put it in his breast pocket. When he spoke, his voice was reedy and clipped.

"It's an address," he said. "Bit north of here I think. Several of my friends are attending a Christmas party. I'm not sure if I should go."

I wasn't sure what to say to that. The keyboardist started up a tinkling refrain. It sounded random to my untrained ears, but what did I know about jazz anyway?

"It's an early Christmas party. Most people have family events and all that, later on in the month."

I nodded patiently.

"It's on the eleventh of December. I don't know the hosts well though, they're friends of friends, that sort of situation. At any rate...I don't know if I should go," repeated Lyall, more solemnly. I couldn't tell if he was looking at me or not; the tiny chandelier reflections hovered right over his eyes, glowing gold.

"Why not?" I asked.

"Well...work things...I ought to get some more done before I go home for the holidays." 

It seemed unlikely, given the frequency of our excursions together, that he would be unable to take a single night off to attend a party.

"There's going to be a lot of people," he continued. "People I don't know..." 

"But you said you have several friends going," I pointed out. Lyall had taken his handkerchief from his pocket and was now folding it neatly into triangles.

"Yes. Well. But, er, people are bringing people, and there's other things..."

"Other things."

"Mm. Other people. Things get boisterous, in the way they do..." He shifted position in his chair nervously. I tried to make eye contact with him, but it was impossible; he looked down at his handkerchief.

"Lyall."

"Yes?"

I spoke softly but plaintively. "You know that nothing you're saying is making any sense."

"Yes, I know."

"Lyall?"

"Sorry. I have a lot on my mind."

"If you're tired, we could head home..." I offered, though I much preferred to watch the musicians with a distracted and anxious Lyall than to sit in the kitchen of Saint Dwnwyn's House with my house matrons, eating papery-thin biscuits and being questioned on how effective my job at the insurance office had been so far in introducing me to suitable young men with "prospects."

"No, that's alright." He fiddled with his tie clip. Shadows passed over his face and the booth behind him as waiters hurried this way and that with drinks.

"Excuse me," Lyall said, flagging down a waiter. "Sorry. I wanted to ask—have you got a Wormwood Punch?"

I giggled.

"What punch?" said the waiter, furrowing his brow.

"A Wormwood—it's er,it's like a spirit, tastes a bit like liquorice, but it's not too sweet—"

"You mean absinthe...?" interrupted the waiter.

"No, no," said Lyall, "it's got something else in it—Firewhiskey and something, but I'm not sure if you'd have that..."

The waiter looked lost. "I could get you a Sazerac," he offered.

"A what?" asked Lyall. He looked to me questioningly and I smiled and shook my head.

"We make it with bourbon whiskey, bitters, absinthe—"

"Yes, thanks. That sounds right."

"One Sazerac," said the waiter, who seemed relieved to be back on familiar territory. "And anything for the lady?"

"Oh." Lyall shifted in his seat. "Did you want something to drink, Hope?"

"I've still got this," I gestured to the iced tea.

"You don't want anything harder?" he asked, sounding the slightest bit amused.

"No thank you." The waiter nodded to Lyall and then disappeared into the milieu surrounding the band. 

Lyall cleared his throat. "I, er...well, I should I have asked you earlier if you wanted a glass of wine, or something..."

"That's alright." My cheeks felt warm. "I wouldn't know what to order," I said shyly. Now, I know that to people your age, it must seem absurd that a twenty-one-year-old girl like myself wouldn't know anything about alcohol. And it's far from true that none of my friends drank—I had emptied enough of my classmates' flowerpots into the snow back in grammar school. But at that time, it wasn't too unusual for a girl of my age to be naive to those aspects of life which seemed impossibly grown up—and to be grown up meant to be married.

Lyall's drink arrived and he tasted it. He seemed to like it enough, though I noticed that he removed the spiral of lemon peel and placed it gingerly on a napkin.

"So," I said. "Is that what you were asking for?"

"Not really," he grinned, "but it's very decent. I wouldn't normally order a cocktail."

"Me neither. I tried a martini once, and I hated it. Why would you put an _olive_ in a _drink_?"

"I've no idea. But I think there are drinks you'd like."

"What kind?"

"Well, mostly cocktails, I suppose. I thought you might like a glass of champagne." He took a swig of his drink.

"You think I'd like those bright pink drinks with all the sugar and the umbrellas, don't you?" I teased. "The girly drinks?"

(In hindsight, he was correct, though that is beside the point of this anecdote.)

Lyall raised his eyebrows and took an exaggerated appraisal of me. "You are a girl."

"Some girls like beer."

"Should I order you a beer?" In the dim light, I could tell he was smiling by the glint of his teeth.

"Are you being facetious?" I said, only realizing a second later how embarrassingly flirtatious I sounded. 

"Perhaps." Lyall looked down and steepled his hands together, resting both elbows on the table in exactly the manner that had been forbidden to me since childhood. He drew a long breath.

"About Christmas," he began.

"Why don't you decide later if you want to go?"

"I would, normally, but if—if you wanted to come with me, then I'd make arrangements in advance."

"Oh," was all I could think to say.

"I mean, I know people are busy that time of the year...but I wouldn't cancel at the last minute is what I mean. If you wanted to come." With a straw, he stirred his drink so violently I could hear the ice cubes clinking over the music. 

"Lyall..." I said, drawing out the syllables of his name as though I were trying to learn a foreign word. "Are you inviting me?" 

"A lot of people are bringing people," he said. "It's fine with the hosts—I mean, there's no imposition..."

I felt very shy all of a sudden and Lyall noticed my reticence.

"It's people I went to school with, and they're bringing friends, it's very casual. It would be, er...platonic."

What is the word used to describe the sensation of hearing what you entirely expected to hear and yet somehow being surprised by it nonetheless? Is there such a word? Lyall somehow looked to be as affected by this unnamed phenomenon as I was.

"If you'd like me to come," I said modestly, "then...I'd like to."

"If it's no bother. Really," he said into his drink, "if it's no fun, we can go home. I'll take you home, I mean. If it's dull or—or anything..."

I wondered if his friends were even more _Lyall_ than Lyall was—if they wore nubbier tweed, re-set their watches more precisely, used a milder manner to speak with even greater rationality. My friends and classmates back in Aberystwyth would have described people like that as "posh"— which I supposed Lyall was, given his boarding school pedigree—but somehow, his mannerisms came off as more idiosyncratic than learned.

"It sounds kind of like you don't want to go," I said.

"It's alright. I understand. It's a...busy month." Lyall leaned away from a tipsy couple who laughed while passing by us so closely that the woman's hip bumped our table, sending ripples through my iced tea. He looked vaguely annoyed. "There's too many Christmas parties anyway. I don't know why people need to celebrate the same holiday ten times."

"I love holiday parties."

"Do you." It wasn't a question.

"I like parties in general. But it's...well, it's a little off-putting, if you don't want to go—I mean, they are your friends. I don't want to drag you."

He shook his head. "You wouldn't be dragging me. 

"So you would like to go?"

He looked up and off to the left, at an unframed painting clouded by the residue of a thousand cigarettes. Softly, he said, "I would like to go with you."

"Then I think you ought to go, then," I said, smiling. "With me."

Lyall gave me a fleeting nod, and then the band segued into another song as Delphic as his demeanor. I watched the musicians perform, and after a waitress wordlessly removed my empty glass, I turned back to see him playing with a small candle that had inexplicably materialized during my inattention; the flames lit up our booth all crimson and bronze, and the chandeliers had disappeared from his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is not being written entirely in chapter order; thus, the long wait. I do have much more content already done, and the wait will not always be so long. Enjoy.


	4. An Immodest Proposal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies for the extremely long wait. I wrote some of the later chapters in the interim, and this particular chapter kept wanting to continue even after I was ready to finish. Please enjoy the soundtrack; I will be taking advantage of AO3's multimedia capacities to include some mixed media goodies in the future.

Click to listen to the soundtrack I created to _In Search of Mythical Kings_. This soundtrack covers the whole story, not just chapters already published.

[Music for Mythical Kings](http://8tracks.com/temperaxmental/music-for-mythical-kings?utm_medium=referral&utm_content=mix-page&utm_campaign=embed_button) from [temperaxmental](http://8tracks.com/temperaxmental?utm_medium=referral&utm_content=mix-page&utm_campaign=embed_button) on [8tracks Radio](http://8tracks.com?utm_medium=referral&utm_content=mix-page&utm_campaign=embed_button).

* * *

"Well, why are you so dressed up?"

I paused at the head of the staircase leading down to the foyer. Val, another girl who boarded at St. Dwynwyn's, was standng at the foot of the stairs, her hands on her hips, curlers jutting out from her hair at odd angles.

"I'm going to a party," I said, my heart sinking slightly. I'd rather hoped to avoid the interrogation tonight—being thoroughly nervous already at the prospect of meeting all of Lyall's friends.

"A party? Why wasn't I invited?" said Val coyly.

"It's just a small thing—it's not—"

"You should have let me do your makeup. Why didn't you say anything this morning? No, wait—I'll get an eye pencil from my room."

"I'm sorry—it just didn't occur to me," I lied. Val had a heavy hand when it came to cosmetics; there was no way I could go out and face Lyall looking like the sort of girl who lingered by the docks, half-frozen without her nylons in December.

"No! I wish you'd told me, we could have made a plan—"

"I think I'll be fine without, thanks," I said and edged down the stairs, practically on tiptoe in my high heels. In the foyer, I took a quick glance at myself in the mirror. My hair was pinned back from my temples, the tips curled into upturned waves. Behind me, the louvered door to the kitchen swung open and Mrs. Owens, one of the house matrons, stepped out. She took one glance at me.

"You're going out with a boy," she announced briskly.

"Well, actually it's a Christmas party. We're going as friends—"

"Do mind the curfew. I worry about you girls going to parties with all those young men, drinking and carousing till all hours."

Val giggled. "It's extended curfew tonight," she pointed out.

"I'll be back on time," I promised.

"Just be careful," said Mrs. Owens, as she wiped her floury hands on her starched apron. "Young men sometimes behave as though all the rules of propriety go out the window"—with this, she waved a cloud of floury dust into the air—"when there's _alcohol_ present."

"I'll be careful," I said quickly, to get out from under her scrutiny. Val laughed and made her way upstairs.

"Have a good time!" she shouted wickedly. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do!"

"There's only about one thing on that list," muttered Mrs. Owens under her breath.

I buttoned up my green felt coat and left for the front stoop before anyone else could lecture me on decorum, proper or otherwise. The evening was mild and windless. Though it was only six o'clock, the sky was black. Streetlamps cast a pinkish glow over the street. There was no one to be seen as I walked down the street towards the bus stop where Lyall planned to meet me.

I waited for two or three minutes, having arrived at our meeting place early. Only a sliver of moon was visible in the starless sky. The endless rows of chimney tops repeated like black paper cutouts, pinned to the horizon.

Then, a loud crack startled me so badly I nearly fell over. It was loud as a gunshot, but somehow crisper—like a sheet of metal snapping in half. I jumped back.

"I hope you haven't eaten," Lyall said mildly. "I only just found out that there's going to be hors d'oeuvres."

"Goodness, I didn't see you coming," I gushed nervously. "I thought I heard a crash."

Lyall buttoned the collar of his coat with leather-gloved hands. I'd never seen him make any concessions to the weather before. "I think it was a stray cat," he said uncuriously. "Must have knocked over a bin."

"Oh," I murmured, embarassed. "I suppose...ever since the incident with the tramp in the forest, I've been a little nervous about noises when I'm alone."

"Quite alright," Lyall said, though he looked uncomfortable.

"I know I'm being silly."

"Doesn't hurt to be careful," he said evenly.

"I did eat, a little. I thought it would be only drinks."

"So did I," Lyall said, "but my friend let me know just this afternoon that it's actually going to be catered."

"Really? That's fancy."

"Yes. Well." He examined my expression, as if to see if I was offended. I smiled for him, and the skin around his eyes crinkled, just the hint of my smile returned. "Actually, I heard a few rumours that there might be an announcement."

"Of?"

"An engagement. That would, er, explain the catering."

"Oh, that would be lovely," I exclaimed. "Are most of your friends married?"

"Hardly, " he said, as two bright headlights appeared, swinging around the corner. "I have two friends that are engaged to each other, but otherwise...look, that's ours." The bus had pulled up at our stop, the engine huffing smoke like a jogger's breath in the cold.

I followed Lyall to a row of seats at the back.

"It's not too far," he said, glancing at his watch. "I don't think we'll be late."

"There's no such thing as late to a party!" I laughed.

"Well, it's supposed to start at seven..." he mused.

"Lyall," I giggled, "nobody comes on time to a party!"

He looked more taken aback then I expected, and I almost felt apologetic when he asked me, quite anxiously, "Do you think we ought to have left a bit later?"

"They're your friends, Lyall. You tell me," I said. He looked down at his hands, his brows knit together with concern. I felt a bit guilty for teasing him, but his anxiety was perplexing. If he didn't want to go to the party, why had he invited me?

"I don't think it will be any trouble," he said softly, almost to himself. We fell into a silence neither tense nor comfortable. I watched through the window as the city lights passed by, yellow eyes blinking in and out of view, overlaid by our reflection—behind me, Lyall had taken out his small, forest green notebook and was rereading his own illegible cursive. I remember marvelling at how he could read such tiny letters, and feeling the lazy vibrations of the bus beneath me, and I thought—

* * *

I wasn't tired at all, but the next thing I knew, Lyall was gently urging me to wake up, with a hand on my shoulder.

"We're here," he said.

"I'm so sorry—I have no idea why I fell asleep. It must have been the motion of the bus. I'm terribly embarassed.

Lyall blinked. He seemed to realize his hand was still on my shoulder and jerked it away.

"Sorry. I, er, I didn't want to wake you," he mumbled. "Until it was time."

"No, it's my fault," I assured him.

"Oi! Are you two getting off or not?!" yelled the driver.

We quickly disembarked as an elderly lady replied to the driver: "When I was that age, I would never have had the temerity—"

The door slammed shut. I whispered to Lyall, "I don't think they had buses back when she was our age."

"That lady's always there," he said. "I've seen her a million times. Here, the road's a bit icy."

He offered me his hand to help me up onto the pavement. My heels clicked against the cement. The row houses before us were large and well-cared for. We made our way up several stairs to a door hung with a Christmas wreath made of painted twigs that shone gold and silver in the lamplight. Lyall reached for the doorknocker, but the moment his finger touched the brass, the door flew open. There was no one behind it but a short corridor and the muffled din of a party beyond the walls.

"That's odd," I remarked. "Did you see how the door just—"

"Must have been the wind," Lyall said shortly.

"I didn't feel any."

"Come, we're upstairs."

I followed Lyall down the corridor and up a flight of steps that seemed awfully long and steep, but only took three or four seconds to climb. The noise became louder; I could make out a man's roaring laughter and the clinking of glasses. When we reached the second floor, an arm shot out of an open doorway, grabbed Lyall roughly by the wrist, and unceremoniously yanked him through.

"There he is!" said a man's raucous voice. I approached timidly, clutching my purse to me as though it were a teddy bear.

"Where've you been? We've all been waiting here, desperate, heartbroken—"

"Oh, ha-ha," said Lyall dryly. He nodded at me and I joined him and his friend in the dimly lit parlour. I was relieved to see that everyone around us was just about Lyall's age. There must have been fifteen or twenty people spread between the parlour and the dining room, where a long, oak table groaned under a magnificent spread of food.

"So you've got a plus-one," said Lyall's friend, a young man with a boyish face and dark, wavy hair. "That's entirely new." He spoke with a thick Scottish burr. It seemed mismatched with his rakish posture; he exuded the handsome laziness of a minor duke or heir to some fortune.

"This is Hope," said Lyall. He turned to me, raising his voice to speak over the ambient noise. "I'm sorry, I should have introduced you to Ogilvy."

"Sorry, I didn't quite catch that name."

"Ogilvy. Yes, it's just my last name. Long story. And you're Hope?"

"Hope Howell," I said shyly. I noticed a tray of canapés being passed around in my peripheral vision. Certainly none of my friends had food like that at their parties.

Ogilvy's dark eyes twinkled as he looked from me back to Lyall. "You told me you were bringing a friend, but I notice you neglected to mention that she was of the feminine variety."

My cheeks warmed. Lyall's mouth tightened into a line. "Forgive him," he said. "Ogilvy's been living in a study carrel for the past two years. He's forgotten how to interact with people who aren't diagrams."

"Oh," I murmured, "are you studying medicine?"

He grinned, flashing a row of crooked teeth. "Not quite."

I masked a flash of déjà vu with a smile. What was it? Before I could remember, two more men holding drinks came to join us.

"Lupin."

Lyall nodded to the taller of the pair, a burly man with a friendly expression and a small waistcoat straining at the seams. I nearly expected a button to fly off and hit me in the face.

"Hope, this is Hoyt."

"Pleased to meet you," he replied, offering me a meaty hand to shake. His grip was surprisingly gentle.

"Hope is a friend of mine," Lyall said preemptively, as Hoyt give him a questioning look. "She's shown me around Cardiff."

"You must be very well acquainted with the city now," Ogilvy ribbed, prompting Lyall to shoot him a glare colder than ice.

"Only a few places," I said, blushing.

"I'm Antony," said Lyall's other friend, a short man with wiry blond hair, oval-shaped glasses and a square jaw "Antony Mountcreed." His accent was posh, all garden luncheons and Savile Row tailoring. Unlike Hoyt, his suit was supremely well-fitted to his short, skinny frame, although the effect was somewhat diminished by the pastry crumbs scattered across his coat.

"We all went to school together," Lyall explained.

"You really must try some of these aubergine things, they're excellent," said Antony, licking his lips.

"Can't you just be a normal person and call it eggplant?" said Ogilvy in mock exasperation.

"What, I'm only calling it what it is—"

"Hoyt, tell him it's a bloody eggplant."

Hoyt laughed. "I don't know if I want to start with you two."

"I didn't start anything," insisted Antony.

"It is a bit pompous," Hoyt admitted. "If you want to split hairs." Ogilvy grinned hugely in triumph, while Antony began to protest. I felt a gentle touch on my shoulder.

I turned to see Lyall looking down, a bit of a smile playing on his face. He sighed.

"Sorry about that," he said. "I think...when we're all together, it, er, it brings out the most puerile instincts."

"Don't be. My friends aren't any more grown-up when we get together."

He raised an eyebrow so subtly I laughed aloud.

"Alright, maybe a little more. But that's just girls, we're like that."

"Would you like a drink?"

"May I take my coat off?"

"Oh...right. Here, give it to me."

Lyall removed his coat and draped it around mine before hanging it in a closet.

I leaned to the side, peeking at a side table laden with pitchers and bottles, but my view was blocked when a man went to pour drinks, his female companion lingering with him directly in my line of sight.

"Would you like a drink?"

"It depends," I said shyly, playing with the ball of amber on my necklace. "Are you going to offer me a 'girly' drink?"

"I will offer you anything you'd like, so long as Ogilvy hasn't already finished it," said Lyall. "Are you going to accept my offer?"

"Mmhmm."

He smiled then, effulgently; it was the first full smile I'd ever seen from Lyall, whose mood was usually restrained. The light was dim, but we were standing close enough together that I could see my own rounded reflection in his dilated pupils. I looked very short and small, and it occurred to me that I was seeing myself as he did. The effect only lasted a moment before he tilted his head somewhat and two yellow lamps reflected off the lenses of his glasses, obscuring his eyes.

"I'll be right back," he said, and disappeared as a throng of people passed by the sideboard. The doorbell rung, (What doorbell? I hadn't seen any doorbell when we were downstairs) and a girl wearing soft, in-door Chinese slippers peeked out the window through the drapes.

I felt somewhat cut adrift, and not only by Lyall's quick departure. It was a strange night, even stranger than I could have known; there were too many moving pieces, and nothing seemed to fit. When I was a child, my mother took my sister and I to visit relatives in Swansea and I remember their perfectly symmetrical blue house; it looked very small on the outside and the inside seemed far too large, amplified by mirrors and trompe l'eoil murals. I'd felt so confused and disoriented by the strange geometries around me that I'd cried, telling my great aunt that her house was "too small to be big" (profusely embarrassing my mother in the process.) The sensation returned to me that night, though I felt not upset, but intoxicated.

"Here you are," said Lyall. "It's punch...I don't think it will be too strong."

"Thank you." I accepted my drink from him; it looked like ordinary fruit punch, but it was served in a bronze goblet etched with swirling curlicues. I heard someone put a record on, the volume cranked up all the way. "You haven't introduced me to the host."

"What?!"

"I said, you haven't introduced me to the host." I took a sip. It was wine—fruity, not too sweet but not too dry either.

"Ah," Lyall said, looking bemused for a moment. "That's going to be a bit, er, complicated."

"A bit what?"

"A bit complicated." He squeezed the stem of his own goblet, which was filled with dark amber liquid. I drank another mouthful of wine; it seemed to morph from one flavour to another as I tasted it.

"Why is it complicated?" I immediately felt guilty for asking; I didn't want him to think I was interrogating him.

"Well..." He said something I couldn't hear.

"What?!"

He repeated himself, but I still couldn't hear.

"What?"

"I SAID, FOLLOW ME."

He led me past the crowd who had gathered around the turntable; a man twirled two girls in flaring skirts on their heels. We reached an alcove with a small table, where people had left their empty goblets next to a framed photograph. It was somewhat quieter there.

Lyall leaned towards me and spoke into my ear.

"You remember I told you how people suspected there was going to be an announcement of an engagement?"

"Yes."

"Well..."

He absentmindedly took his handkerchief from his breast pocket and folded it into a fractal of triangles.

"The thing is," he said, "Corner—Irvin Corner, the man whose flat this is, he isn't really a friend of mine. We were a bit—well, he wasn't very friendly with Ogilvy at school. They had something of a rivalry. His sweetheart is an...ex-girlfriend of Ogilvy's. I wasn't terribly fond of Corner either."

My expression must have conveyed some of my confusion, for Lyall spoke more quickly, with a somewhat pained expression.

"You see, Gil and I were quite inseparable at that time, he was, er, much less outspoken at the—anyways, I don't think Corner is all that happy to see me. But I had to come because Tertia's father is a good friend of mine, and he's got a prestigious position high up in the Minis—in the field Ogilvy's studying, so Gil wants an introduction, but that means cozying up to Tertia again, except without me it would look too much like, er..."

"Like he was trying to get back together with her,"

"Exactly." Lyall considered the tiny, densely packed kerchief in his hand and smoothed it back into a rectangle. "I'm presumably here because we're old family friends, Tertia and I, but that is something of an exaggeration...I had, er...hoped to avoid running into either of them. There was something of a falling out between my mother and her mother, not that it's really concerning us."

"Us?"

"Tertia and I."

For a moment, I had wondered if we were an us. My thoughts were interrupted by a girl hurrying down the hall. She rudely pushed between Lyall and I to get past, muttering only a cursory, "excuse me."

"Was that her?" I asked timidly.

Lyall shook his head and gave me an impenetrable look. "Tertia's the one in slippers. For all intents and purposes, she lives here." He looked down immediately after saying that, and took a small step backwards, bumping into the table. A framed photo fell forward. Lyall righted it, and shot me an apologetic glance. "I probably shouldn't have said that."

"Why not?" I said, half laughing.

He opened his mouth as if to speak, closed it, and then opened it again. "Well...I don't want to offend you..."

I smiled at him. "I won't be."

He glanced at the ceiling as if to search for the answer up there. "It's just that, er, some people—people I know—they might not approve of, er, co-habitation before marriage."

"Do you think I'm just scandalized?"

"I—" his expression was twisting into a mixture of fear and laughter when we were interrupted by Ogilvy, who slung an arm around Lyall's back so forcefully that Lyall grimaced.

"HAVING FUN?" he shouted. I noticed a gold-coloured drink in his other hand. Before Lyall could answer, he said, "I knew I'd find you in a corner somewhere. You're no fun at parties."

"I'm never any fun at all," Lyall said dryly, "so why would you expect any change?"

Ogilvy looked me up and down. "Pity you've gotten all dressed up for this stick in the mud. Don't you want to come have a go at Expl—"

"Gil," said Lyall quietly. To my surprise, Ogilvy went silent and shot a look at Lyall before bursting into a fresh round of giggles. Lyall sidestepped him and swallowed the remainder of his own drink.

"Do you want some food?" he offered. "I know you've eaten earlier, but..."

"Oh," I blushed. "Well...maybe some fruit salad.

"Alright, then. If you don't mind, since I haven't had dinner..." He gestured towards the dining room and I followed him. Most people had taken plates of food to eat in the living room, but there was a man who looked to be in his fifties sitting in a corner, shovelling Welsh rarebit and green beans into his mouth off a plate held just under his chin. He made eye contact with Lyall and nodded.

Lyall cleared his throat nervously. "Hello, Mr. Corner."

The man swallowed and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. "Lyall Lupin, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir."

"I heard you got a major grant from the SASQUATCH*.

"Oh, it—it wasn't that major," Lyall muttered.

"The what?" I whispered.

"Acronym," he said curtly.

"Hmm. Well, my wife certainly thought it was major," said Mr. Corner, loading up his fork with a pile of meat. "Who are you?" he asked me matter-of-factly.

I shrunk back, feeling as though I'd gatecrashed and been caught.

"This is a friend of mine," said Lyall quickly. "She's—not from school."

"Ah." A wry smile crept across Mr. Corner's face. "I see. Well, what are you two waiting for then?"

I blushed.

"Go get something to eat! We haven't put out all this spread for decoration..."

"Thank you," I murmured. Lyall nodded awkwardly at Mr. Corner and then loaded a plate with a towering pile of various foods, not noticing that he was heaping gravy onto his chocolate éclairs. I took some fruit salad and attempted to scoop some ice cream into a bowl, but it was rock hard. An arm extended around mine and took the scooper from me.

"Let me do that," said Lyall. He carved out a ball of ice cream as easily as if it were margarine.

"I'm really not that weak, usually," I protested.

"It was frozen solid," he said, his solemn expression twitching slightly.

"No, really. I always open jars on my own."

"I believe you." His mouth held just the hint of a smile.

"Lyall!"

"I do. I believe you eminently." He gestured towards a sofa in the parlour, where two deep indentations implied a recent vacancy. "Would you like a seat?"

"I don't need to sit," I giggled. "Really."

"Suit yourself," he said. "I prefer to sit while I'm eating." He sat down at the end of the sofa, by the armrest. The middle was empty; on the far left, a drunk-looking man was sleeping, his head tossed back against the pillows.

I gave in and sank down between them. Lyall's expression was part smug, part amused.

"Comfortable? Would you like an extra pillow?"

"Oh, stop it, you." I couldn't help but laugh. Someone put on another record; I heard the needle scratch, and then the music roared before the volume was quickly adjusted.

Lyall leaned closer and said, "I'm sorry. I had no intention of injuring your feelings."

In the lamplight, I could see the faintest lines beginning to crease his forehead.

"I'm no delicate flower."

"No, no. You're a very strong little flower." He eyed me seriously for a fraction of a second before breaking out into his second real grin of the evening. For a moment, I had the urge to remove his glasses and see what he looked like without them, as if some hidden self only glimpsed through the slats of a fence might be revealed to me in full.

"Who's a flower?" asked a female voice. I looked up to see a girl my age with red lipstick and curly dark hair pinned back from her face with numerous bobby pins.

"Oh, hi."

"Oh, hi to you to. Where've you been all night? Ashleigh tells me you were hiding in a dark corner last he saw you."

"I've been—" Lyall glanced at me, looking embarrassed. "I should introduce you, shouldn't I?"

"Oh, you're the guest, then. Gil said Lyall had brought someone, but I didn't believe him."

"...oh."

"This is Felicia," Lyall said as he stared down at his plate. Apparently, he'd noticed the gravy seeping into his dessert, as he pushed the eclairs to the side of his plate with a dejected clink of his fork. "Felicia, Hope Howell."

"Hello," I said shyly.

"Felicia is another friend," said Lyall. "She's Hoyt's fiancée."

"Yes, that's Ashleigh," she added, "but no one calls him that but me. He's gone to the loo."

"Too much to drink again?" asked Lyall dryly.

"You've no idea. We've been here since six-thirty. I only hope it's not coming out the way it went in." She scowled and then broke into a smile. I noticed the ring on her finger. If I hadn't known she was engaged, I would have taken it for normal jewelry, for it was silver and the diamond was so small it looked like a baby's stud earring.

"I'm sure he'll be fine," said Lyall, who seemed to have relaxed enough to take a giant bite out of his chocolate éclair.

Then music was switched off. Mr. Corner, alone in the doorway to the dining room, was tinkling a spoon against a goblet. He waited for the din of conversation to die out and then pulled an embarrassed-looking young man with big ears and tiny wire-framed glasses to his side.

"That's Irvin," Lyall breathed into my ear.

"Er, hello everyone," said Mr. Corner cheerily. "Welcome. I hope you enjoyed the food, all of it homemade, of course," he added, with a dramatic wink. A few people laughed dutifully, and I heard a cat meow.

"As you know, this is, er, Irvin's day, not mine. That's why we're here...no thank you, Pudding," he said, looking down; for a moment, I assumed he was speaking to a child, until I saw the black and white cat at his feet who held an entire roasted chicken in his jaws and was patiently offering it to Mr. Corner. "Sorry about that.

I giggled and several heads turned to look at me. Lyall stared down at his plate.

"I'm sure you know that today is a special occasion for our family, and not just because it's my wife's birthday."

Irvin, whose ears where reddening as he stared down at the floor, muttered "Dad."

"Alright, alright, to the point. Well, I'm sure you all know that my son has been, er, going out with a very lovely young lady—"

"Dad."

("Oh my god," whispered Felicia next to me.)

"Yes, yes, you want to do it yourself. Go ahead." Mr. Corner stepped off to the side, accidently treading on the cat's paw. With a muffled meow in protest, the cat scurried away, roast chicken still dangling ten inches off the floor.

"Erm." Irvin spoke up. He was looking at someone sitting right before him, presumably Tertia.

"I just—I wanted to thank you all for coming today, and, er, I know it's almost Christmas and a lot of you have other events to go to..."

He reminded me of Lyall a little too much and I smiled to myself.

"And I just wanted to—" Looking a bit lost, he pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and stepped forward. My view was blocked by the crowd sitting and standing ahead of me, including Lyall, who glanced at me and looked away.

"Tertia," continued Irvin unsteadily, "erm...I suppose you know what this is."

("Yes," whispered Felicia, "it's just about the least romantic—"

"Shh!" warned another girl.)

"...don't you?"

I heard an embarrassed titter.

"Tertia, I, er, I love you very much," he continued shakily. "And, er, I want—"

"JUST DO IT!" came a man's voice from somewhere near the front door. No more than one person laughed; Lyall reflexively clapped his hands over his face, fingers sliding beneath his glasses to cover his eyes.

"Please tell me that wasn't Gil," whimpered Felicia.

"It wasn't him," Lyall whispered automatically.

Whoever it was, Irvin bravely obeyed. "I want to marry you."

"Do you want to re-phrase that as a question?" asked Mr. Corner cheerily.

"No, I want to die," said Felicia flatly, under her breath. The cat mewed in agreement. Even I felt my cheeks burn.

"Erm...Tertia, will you marry me?"

(" _I can't believe this_.")

As a long, silent moment passed, I worried that she had been taken by surprise and was completely unprepared to answer. Then people started clapping and cheering, and I realized she must have nodded. Mr. Corner beamed with pride. An older woman I assumed must be either Mrs. Corner or Tertia's mother hugged both Irvin and Tertia, whose face was glowing red. Someone put the turntable back on, mercifully, and the noise level rose to drown out any lingering awkwardness.

"That was, er..." Lyall looked at me, bemusement on his face. "Unexpected."

"Oh my god," said Felicia, "I'm so sorry you had to witness that, Hope. We all thought they were already engaged and today was the announcement. I never imagined this travesty would occur before my own eyes."

"It's alright," I laughed. "I had a surprise."

Lyall swallowed the last of his drink and wiped his mouth with a napkin. "I don't understand," he said, "how you could propose to someone in front of everyone you know. I just don't understand."

"SOME PEOPLE THINK THAT'S ROMANTIC!" shouted Ogilvy, who had materialized in front of the sofa with another goblet in hand. Even in the dim light, I could see beads of sweat on his forehead. "NOT ME, BUT SOME PEOPLE."

"Do you know you're yelling?" asked Lyall casually.

Felicia shook her head ruefully. "Have you seen Ashleigh?" she asked. "I'm starting to worry."

"HE OBVIOUSLY HASN'T LEFT, HIS COAT IS STILL HERE."

She rolled her eyes. "You lost him, then."

"I'm sure he's fine," said Lyall, "just fine." He sounded slightly dazed, as though he'd been hit over the head with a mallet. "It's not as if..." His brow furrowed. "I don't understand...because if she refused, then what?"

"I would crawl under a sofa and never come out," I admitted.

"Well, I would kill Ashleigh if he did that to me. And my father, and everyone else who witnessed that," Felicia announced, gesticulating so violently she hit Ogilvy in the stomach. It was at least twelve seconds before he reacted.

"OW! WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH YOU?"

"Go away, you're spitting on me when you talk," she complained.

"I'M NOT SPITTING. LYALL, AM I NOT SPITTING? I MEAN, NOT SPITTING?"

Lyall merely looked at me with a slight smile.

Felicia leaned away from Ogilvy in disgust. "You're doing it again."

The song changed to something brassy and fast-paced. I noticed a man ahead of us spinning a girl around playfully, the plaid of her skirt spinning into rings like those on a potter's bowl. She laughed and collapsed backward into his arms, pretending to object when he kissed her neck.

"WHY SO GLUM, MY SUGAR PLUM?" Ogilvy yelled in our general direction. I wasn't sure which one of us he was addressing, but Lyall looked away from the couple with an insulted sniff, while Felicia got up off the sofa and smoothed down her skirt.

"I'm leaving," she said. "I hate couples, they're so depressing."

"BUT YOU ARE A COUPLE. I MEAN, HALF OF YOU—I MEAN—"

"Not without Ashleigh. Well, I'm off to find him. It was nice meeting you. So sorry you've been subjected to all of this, Hope," she said kindly. "Ogilvy isn't always this bad. It's nice to see you bring someone," she added, turning to face Lyall. "You should try it more often."

"Oh..." I clutched at my fork, not quite knowing what to say. "It was...nice to meet you."

"ARE PEOPLE GOING HOME? ISN'T IT SO EARLY?"

Lyall ignored Ogilvy and turned to me. He opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it, gazing down at his plate studiously.

"Er...do you think you'd like to get another drink?"

"I probably shouldn't," I said hesitantly. "I mean, I don't want to be tipsy when I get home. We're not really supposed to, you know..."

"Drink. I see. Well, maybe you'd like some water?"

"Yes, please."

I followed him to the side table, weaving through clusters of people. Every so often, the doorbell chimed or a group of men laughed loudly.

"It's a bit rude for people to come after the main event, don't you think?" I said.

"Well, you can't blame them. Nobody was told Irvin's father was going to make him propose at nine-fifteen."

"You don't think he forced him to, did he?" I said, feeling, slightly alarmed. Lyall shook his head.

"I doubt it. I mean, certainly the venue was his idea, and probably the modus operandi but those two have been going steady since we were in school." Lyall poured me a glass of water. Ice cubes clinked together in the heavy bronze pitcher.

I took a sip of water, but the punch I'd drank earlier had already gone to my head; it was just enough, combined with the strange atmosphere, to make me a little more flirtatious than necessary.

I stood on tiptoe to reach his ear and whispered, "Everything here looks like it came from a medieval manor."

He nodded. "It probably did. The Corners are old money." He glanced around and leaned closer to me before whispering, "Thank goodness they only had boys, or my parents would have tried to...you know..."

"To fix you up?" I smiled at him, knowing it would make him stammer and backtrack. I was not disappointed.

"Well—I don't mean they really...it's not that I actually, er, look for that sort of...that sort of person..."

"Of course you don't."

He hesitated, looking flustered.

"Lyall, I'm only joking."

He eyed me suspiciously and sipped his drink. Behind him, I noticed a girl sitting on the floor, her knees drawn up. She appeared to be crying.

"Do you think we should—" I gestured to her.

"Oh," he said dumbly. "Yes..."

We approached the girl; she was clutching her knees, which peeked out from argyle socks. Her face was flushed, her cheeks the colour of a lobster.

I knelt down next to her. "Are you alright?"

She shook her head without speaking. Lyall glanced at us and backed away shyly.

"What's the matter?" I touched her shoulder. "Did something happen?"

"Yes, something happened," she blurted angrily.

"What—"

"What happened..." she whined loudly, "what _happened_ is these _DRUNK PEOPLE_ are _STEALING_ my _COLESLAW_!"

At this, she gestured wildly to a plate beside her on the floor. There was nothing on it but crumbs. I recognized the pattern, though; it was from the cheese platter.

Lyall looked at me. His mouth was a perfect O.

"LYALL!" yelled someone from across the room. As soon as he turned in the direction of the man's voice, the crying girl pushed herself to her feet and huffed, " _No one_ is being f _aaaaaair_! _No one_ –HIC!—has _any manners_ any more!"

"Dear god," whispered Lyall.

"Hey! Lupin!" Hoyt pushed past a clique of couples who were simultaneously gossiping and making embarrassingly public displays of affection in the obnoxious manner of those who are either entirely lacking in self-consciousness or possess far too much of it.

"Hi," said Lyall. "I think Felicia's looking for you."

The coleslaw girl took several unsteady steps towards the dining room and stumbled, before a girlfriend of hers took notice and grabbed her arm. Together, they disappeared—quite literally disappeared—from view.

Hoyt shook his head. "We've met up already. She's actually with Tertia. I think they're talking about W-E-D-D-I-N-G-S."

"Good luck with that," said Lyall brightly.

Hoyt grinned at me sheepishly. He looked nowhere near as intoxicated as Ogilvy, and probably even more clearheaded than me.

"I suppose I should explain," he said. "Felicia and I have been engaged for, er, for a while—"

"Congratulations," I said.

"Is it two years now?" asked Lyall. The smirk playing across his face was a shadow of Ogilvy's knowing smile when Lyall had introduced me.

"Well...since Christmas of '55, so I guess...that's almost two years—anyways, for a myriad of reasons, legitimate reasons, most of them financial, we haven't had the opportunity to, you know..."

"Get married?" I offered. Two young men holding pastries wrapped in napkins wandered past us, briefly cutting between Hoyt, Lyall and me.

"Well, of course we want to get married, but, er, the timing has been...something of a point of contention," said Hoyt, who seemed not at all offended by the interlopers.

"Oh," I said.

"You'll be alright," said Lyall. "I don't suppose they'll bring up honeymoons yet, do you? I mean, what with Christmas coming up..."

Hoyt, whose shoulders were already slumped, deflated even further upon the word "honeymoon."

"Lyall." I swatted his arm lightly. "Don't be cruel."

Hoyt from Lyall's arm to my face, and back to Lyall. He said nothing, but Lyall seemed to notice his expression because his posture tightened, and he took a small step away from me. My cheeks burned. Suddenly, the punch seemed to slosh around in my stomach.

"I think I'd like to sit down," I said. "I'm sorry, it's just—I don't really drink often."

"No, of course," said Lyall. "I think the sofa's taken but there are some seats left by the buffet."

"Well, I'll leave you to it," said Hoyt, who was no longer slumped over in defeat. He re-buttoned a button on his waistcoat that had come undone and tried to tug the hem of it down across his barrel chest in earnest. "I don't want to interrupt."

"Oh, it's no interruption," I assured him. "It was nice to meet you."

"Well, I suppose I'll see you later," Lyall said. We parted from Hoyt; he went off towards a doorway leaking a ribbon of gold light across the floor. I followed Lyall back to the dining room. The song playing on the record ended and in the scratchy quiet between tracks, I heard a small pitter-patter on the carpeted floor.

Lyall and I sat down on dining chairs that had been pushed back against the wall to make room for the buffet. The food had been thoroughly picked over; the lovely fruit platter was now a plate of grape stems, decorative gooseberries and the shaved cantaloupe rosette that had been its centrepiece. Several empty goblets had been abandoned next to a tray carrying only a shallow pool of gravy and a single bone.

"I'm surprised there isn't a cake," I said. "I mean—since your friend's father seemed to know in advance that he'd propose."

"There probably will be," Lyall replied. "Knowing the Corners, it'll most likely be iced with the couple's monogram." He was now on his third drink, but showed no sign of it. His hair was still neatly parted and gelled to one side, his skin its usual tan. There was something intriguing about the utter consistency of his appearance from one day to another. He wasn't like some of the men who worked in my office, who slept there overnight during stressful periods and worked the next morning looking dishevelled and weary, wearing what was clearly the same suit and a different shirt. He was more like a raccoon or a cat, who was identifiable clearly by their unchanging coat of fur.

"There goes Antony...I can't believe he's found the only other girl none of us know," said Lyall.

"Where?" I craned my neck, but couldn't spot him in the crowded parlour. I only just noticed a flicker of motion beneath the dining room table.

"You just missed him. They went off together, I think to the study."

"Should I be grateful or disappointed that we're the only ones here behaving?" I asked with a giggle.

"Somehow," said Lyall, "no matter how lucky he gets, Antony still manages to ruin—Hope, move—"

I felt something plop down onto my lap. It was the roast chicken, now slightly torn up and sporting considerable bite marks. Chicken grease now shone from the wool of my skirt.

"Meow!" announced the cat, who had appeared on the chair next to me, with great satisfaction.

"I'm sorry—if I had seen him earlier, I would have warned you," stammered Lyall. He grabbed the chicken from my skirt. A sliver of meat fell off and slid down my thigh onto the floor.

"Er..." I didn't know quite what to say. "If there's a napkin—"

"Yes—of course—" Lyall got up from his seat and dashed to the table. He was still holding the entire chicken in one hand. The dining room seemed to expand and contract in front of me like a pair of lungs. Brassy, big band music buzzed in my ears. Lyall was searching the table frantically for a napkin, and I remember thinking that with his back turned to me, he could have been anyone—his dark grey suit and neatly combed hair so featureless.

And then Ogilvy staggered in, carelessly sloshing stout from his goblet onto the carpet. I shrunk back in my chair in self-protection, for he looked exceedingly sociable.

"DO YE KNOW FA AH JIST MIT?"

Lyall gave him some kind of meaningful look and said something so quietly I couldn't hear.

"OH, LIGHTEN UP. IF YOU—OH EXCELLENT, WHERE'D YE NAB 'AT FRAE?" asked Ogilvy. "WELL, SINCE YE SAVED ME A PIECE—"

"What?" said Lyall.

Ogilvy ripped a drumstick off the chicken in Lyall's hand and bit off a huge chunk of meat. "AND AH THOUGHT A'TH'FOOD WISH GAEN!" he said nearly incomprehensibly, while chewing. "THANKSH, LUPIN."

I tried to give Lyall a naughty smile but he was frozen, staring at the carpet. The remainder of the chicken fell from his hand to the carpet, where Pudding pounced on it greedily. I watched, mesmerized as Ogilvy stooped down to pet his neck clumsily. The cat escaped from his drunken gesture of affection, leaping onto the table to lick from someone's abandoned goblet of champagne.

"YE C'N TEEL 'S'A GIRL," Ogilvy sniffed, his voice so soft he was almost not shouting. "Nae matter hoo weLl ye treat them, they jist rin awa'."

"Right," muttered Lyall, glancing at his watch. "I think—I think we need to run, you said you must be home by ten o'clock."

"Oh—yes, I didn't notice the time. Do you have—?"

"Sorry," said Lyall, as he quickly handed me the napkins he'd picked up. I wiped up my skirt as best I could. He looked at me tentatively and nodded towards the doorway; I followed him. We wended our way through the crowd. I noticed many of the cliques had broken up into couples. Single girls and young men stood awkwardly with their backs to the wall, some eating cake or fixing their hair.

"I'm so sorry for this—" said Lyall, as we reached the coat closet.

"No, no," I said, smiling. "It happens. I have a cat at home, in Aberystwyth."

"Nonetheless," he said softly. "I'll pay, if it needs to be cleaned."

"It's really alright—"

"No, I insist." His rounded eyebrows were wispy, lighter than his brown hair. I remember it as the first time I ever saw his brows knit together like that, in guilt. Years later, we would laugh at the memory of that night, and I would try to coax him into getting a cat, but he always said no, because Remus's screaming would scare it away.

I sincerely regret not getting Remus a kitten to keep him company. He was really very sweet to animals, though a little afraid of dogs, for understandable reasons. When he went away to Hogwarts, he outgrew the fear, just like so many jumpers and children's games and the way he'd snuggle up to me when I sat next to him on the sofa.

* * *

Lyall returned me to my doorstep just in time to make my curfew. He apologized profusely again for the whole evening while I tried to reign in the giggles. He looked very relieved when I patted his shoulder and assured him I'd had a nice time.

We saw each other two more times before Christmas, meeting at the library to look at an exhibition of local college-age artists' work (my idea) and at a malt shop (also my idea, though Lyall was very thrilled by getting to choose whatever flavours he liked for his soda. It was almost as though he'd never heard of a soda fountain before.) He told me he was going to his family home in Lancashire for Christmas. I had never heard of Foxhaven, the tiny village he was from; Lyall assured me it was very obscure.

We exchanged Christmas presents after Lyall finished his soda, though neither of us had known the other was intending to buy anything. He gave me a black leather journal with creamy pages and a red ribbon attached to the spine. The cover was stamped H in gold foil. When I thanked him, he became quiet and tersely suggested it was only right, seeing as I'd been so nice about what he referred to as "the Christmas party fiasco."

I felt a little guilty about my gift for him, a pack of playing cards that came in a colourful tin. There was no way I'd spent half as much on it as he did on my gift; there was hardly anything left in my purse after Christmas shopping. His card was handmade, decorated with pen-and-ink drawings I'd done of stockings filled with sweets hung around a fireplace. Lyall slit the envelope open neatly, without a tear. When he saw my drawing, Lyall's mouth twitched and crinkles appeared around his eyes.

"It's stupid," I said.

"I like it."

"No, it's really dumb."

"I don't think so," he said. "I can't draw like that." He read the message and then folded the card up and slid it neatly back into the envelope, which he had managed to open without tearing.

"Happy Christmas," I said, tracing the curly pattern of the linoleum table.

"Happy Christmas," he said, and frowned.

"What?"

"I don't understand any of these songs on the radio. What does sh-boom mean?"

I shook my head for a long time, ignoring his demands to know why I was laughing.

It wasn't a radio. It was a jukebox.

* * *

*Society for the Academic Study of Specular, Quixotic, Unidentifiable And Thaumaturgically Complex Hauntings


	5. Winter and Spring

I was given the week off work for Christmas and I spent it back home in Aberystwyth. My man and dad offered to put me up in the basement on a hideaway bed, a privilege I'd never been offered as a teenager (despite my frequent requests for more privacy and fewer opportunities for Jeannie to steal my clothes.) To their surprise, I turned down the offer, and spent the week in my old bedroom with Jeannie. Now that we weren't living together, all the little spats we'd had during our childhood seemed hilariously trivial. I hardly socialized with anyone else that week. Nobody back in Cardiff knew me as well as she did, and I hardly had any old school chums to confide in anymore. Almost all of them had drifted off into their own private worlds, getting engaged, married, and then engulfed in nappies and their own nuptial bliss. The few adventurous sorts who had remained single had long since moved to more prosperous cities with better opportunities. I suppose you could say I was one of them, though Cardiff didn't feel all that adventurous, and the insurance office was rife with many things (stale air and paper clips among them), but not with opportunities for a girl like me to advance.

Christmas passed uneventfully. Jeannie was happy because she'd passed her hairdressing exam, and my dad was happy that she was gainfully employed. One evening, I briefly mentioned that I'd had a run-in with an aggressive tramp who had tried to kidnap me, only to be saved by a Good Samaritan at just the right moment. My parents were properly shocked, horrified and relieved, displaying all the necessarily theatric responses to my saga.

Of course, I'd left out the part where I'd gone for a walk in the forest all by myself, and had neglected to tell anyone where I would be for the afternoon. Nor did I mention that the Good Samaritan was a young man just about my age, and that we'd been friends ever since. (Remus later inherited this tendency to leave out crucial portions of the narrative, never directly lying, but doing the equivalent by omission. It was a ruse Lyall fell for over and over, but he was perfectly transparent to me. My god... how I miss them both now.)

One night, as I sat on the toilet's lid, brushing my hair while Jeannie applied her nightly litany of facial creams and moisturizers, I mentioned to her only in passing that I'd seen Lyall again. She'd asked me if I had made any new friends in Cardiff and I'd listed some other secretaries and clerks at the office, as well as the girls at Saint Dwynwyn's (none of whom were truly my friends.) Jeanie had more friends than I, and more than a few platonic male friends, so she wasn't suspicious the way our parents would have been. They thought any male friends of ours were boyfriends, though at our age, girls didn't go steady for long without getting a ring.

It wasn't that I really fancied Lyall; not yet. But there was something quiet and private about our friendship, and for the time being, I wanted to keep it that way. My job was boring and my housemates were not ideal, and if Cardiff wasn't the exciting city I'd hoped it would be, at least there was the puzzle of Lyall: his disconcerting sense of humour, his gentle courtesy and the weird incongruities that sprang up around us when we were together, as though the world were a pop-up card I could only open when he was there.

* * *

I returned to Cardiff after the holidays with several new outfits and a parcel of homemade cranberry biscuits. Two weeks passed dully. My attic bedroom was an icebox; as I slept, I would reflexively curl into such a tight ball that I woke up with aching muscles, my skin damp with cold sweat.

I ate supper with all my housemates and the matrons, Mrs. Winchfill and Mrs. Owens. We took turns politely their interrogations, which is what passed for conversation when the matrons were present. And they were always present; perhaps if they lived their own lives, they wouldn't be so obsessed with monitoring ours.

"Hope has received a letter," announced Mrs. Winchfill to the table.

"Fascinating," whispered Irene under her breath. She lived on the ground floor, where the matrons could keep a close eye on her.

"I got a letter?" Nobody had given me any letter, and there were none in my mail cubbyhole that afternoon.

"Yes, and it arrived this evening, after the post. No stamp, either."

"Oh."

"Whoever wrote it must have dropped it off in person," said Mrs. Owens.

"I wonder who wrote it," mused Mrs. Winchfill, as if she hadn't already read it with her X-ray vision.

Val rolled her dramatically outlined eyes.

"No return address," said Mrs. Owens.

"I wouldn't expect so, given that it had  _ no stamp _ and clearly wasn't sent in the post," said Irene, as condescendingly as possible.

"Here you go, dear," said Mrs. Winchfill. She stretched across the table in precisely the way we were forbidden to go, and handed me the small envelope. "Go on, have a look."

Mrs. Owens eyed me expectantly.

"Oh, I wouldn't want to be rude and read a letter at the dinner table," I said sweetly.

"That's alright," Mrs. Owens assured me. "You didn't get a chance to read it earlier."

"I wonder why," said Mable innocently. Her room was directly below mine, and though she was known for sneaking certain liquids into the house and divvying them up in exchange for borrowed clothing and extra time in the bathroom, the matrons gave her a wide berth out of sympathy, because she was an orphan and had no family.

"I wonder why the sender dropped it off in the mailbox instead of asking for you in person. To come all the way just to send a letter..." Mrs. Winchfill feigned puzzlement.

"It must be important news," Val announced. "Maybe a wedding invitation."

"People send wedding invitations in the mail," said Mrs. Winchfill. "Go on, Hope. Open it."

I noticed that nobody at the table was eating. The shepherd's pie was untouched. Needless to say, I really didn't want to open the letter there.

"Maybe Hope wants to read it later," said Edith quietly. She was a shy but sweet girl, bookish and bespectacled. Edith was a student at the university, which was unusual for girls in those days.

"It's just a letter," said Mrs. Winchfill. "There's no reason to fear a piece of paper." 

(There are, indeed, many reasons to fear a piece of paper, and years later I would discover each one of them when neighbours found out about Remus and sent us Howlers and jinxed hate mail.)

"Maybe it's a summons," giggled Norah, the most recent addition to the house. She had moved in after enrolling in a nursing college, and could often be found curled up in front of the fire, studying obscene diagrams.

"It's not a summons," said Mrs. Winchfill irritably, "it would have a stamp."

"It's obviously from a  _ boy _ ," said Irene, "or she'd open it now."

"She never tells us about her dates until after the fact," said Val. "Hope, we aren't going to steal them for ourselves—"

"Valerie," said Mrs. Owens sharply.

"But you know it's true," Val insisted. Irene threw her head back and laughed, flashing the red lipstick on her teeth.

In spite of myself, I flushed a deep pink. There was a young man who worked in the office above mine who fancied me; we'd met in the elevator several times. He was condescending and made fun of my position all the time, as though I'd find my low station in the world funny. He had asked me out several times; each time, I politely declined, and each time, he laughed and insisted I was playing hard-to-get.

I won't name him now, as that would spoil the surprise when you meet him later on. But it wouldn't have been beyond him to find out my address and deliver a letter in person, and I dared not risk the additional teasing of my housemates over a man who idea of flirtation was embarassing a twenty-one-year-old girl with sarcastic comments.

"I think that's enough about Hope's personal life for now," said Mrs. Winchfill, now convinced that her best chance of snooping would be later on, in private. "None of you girls has cleaned the second floor WC since last week. Do I need to make up a chart again?"

There was silence around the table. Someone would have to volunteer unless we wanted a chore chart like little children, but nobody wanted to volunteer. Bathroom duty as the absolute worst; the six of us girls shared one bathroom, a steaming jungle of spilled powders, make-up tubs with no lid, multiple hair dryers with cords tangled like snakes in a mating frenzy, always one less toothbrush then there were people, and a situation involving a basket of wire curlers and knotted hair that you simply wouldn't believe, even if you believe in witches  and werewolves  and  rock 'n' roll. 

Sometimes I would break down first and volunteer, but if I did it today, it would look like I was trying to distract everyone from the letter. I held my breath and hoped Edith would give in before Mrs. Winchfill took out her pink pencil. I watched the furrow between her eyebrows deepen; if she made a chart for us, I would inevitably be given the worst chores as punishment for withholding the letter. 

"It's alright," murmured Edith. "I haven't done it in a long time, it's my turn."

"Are you sure, dear? I know you have  _so much studying _ to do," said Mrs. Owens, who was looking directly at me.

"Really," said Edith. "It's alright."

I exhaled and squeezed the letter on my lap, thumbs pressing together through paper smooth as vellum. Later that night, I would have to keep it in the lockbox, with my journal; both matrons held master keys for every room in the house and periodically went through them, to check for "fire safety." I kept the key to the lockbox on me at all times, either in my pocket (while at home) or in my purse.

"Can we eat now?" protested Mabli. "I'm starving."

* * *

_ Hello, _

_ I hope you've enjoyed your holidays back home. I was envious when you mentioned your mother's excellent cooking. My Christmas was relaxing, if subdued, but I am glad to be back at work. After living on one's own, it is difficult to go back to old routines at the family home, but I suppose you actually have more freedom at home than at that place can neither spell nor pronounce. _

_ You are most likely very busy at work, I know. I sympathize, but if you have any spare time in the evening, maybe you would like to have coffee or visit the library with me. I would like that, but I understand if it's not possible. _

_ I forgot to wish you a happy new year, so I shall do it now. I hope all goes well for you this coming year, _

_ Sincerely, Lyall Lupin _

* * *

It was no surprise to me that the letter was from him, but I felt happy and a little embarassed all the same. Thank goodness I hadn't given in and opened it downstairs—all the girls would have misinterpreted his words and made a whole to-do out of my going out with a male friend alone. Lyall was much more of gentleman than any of the other boys who came by the house, carrying flowers and really awful chocolates with unidentifiable fillings, but my housemates (never mind Winchfill and Owens) would spoil things by implying he had less than pure intentions.

Valerie didn't try to embarrass me—she just read everything in life as a paperback romance. Her mind was the dirtiest, but Irene could be deliberately nasty. Sometimes she was very sweet, lending me clothes and sharing the homemade peanut brittle her mother would send in the post. And then the next day, I'd find out that all the girls girls at St. Dwynwyn's were invited to her boyfriend's graduation party at a St. Fagan's Castle, except for me. Worse still, she implied to everyone else that I had been invited and declined, because I "would rather stay in," so of course they were sure to gush about the party the next day right in front of me. After I told Val I hadn't been invited, Irene later intimated to her in private that sometimes I lied about things like that to get sympathy. Mable could go from sweet to sour depending on her mood, but at least she wasn't passive-aggressive.

I wasn't very friendly with the other girls I lived with, and I like to think it wasn't for lack of trying. Edith was sweet, but too shy to befriend. There were a few girls I worked with at the office who were around my age, but only two were unmarried. We sometimes at our lunches together or went out to see a film in the evening. To be honest, I didn't have much chemistry with them.

Though we had only known each other several months, Lyall had quickly become my closest Cardiff friend. It was off, because we had almost  _nothing_ in common. He had never heard of any of my favourite musicians and he rarely, if ever, went to the cinema. Lyall's field of study was so obscure he found it 'too difficult' to explain exactly what he did. 

Our family backgrounds were completely different. He wasn't exactly wealthy, but I could tell his family had some kind of pedigree, for he had mentioned that his grandparents collected exotic artifacts as a hobby. He'd also commented that his mother never cooked, and wouldn't know how to use an iron if her life depended on it, so I assumed they had a maid. Lyall had attended a boarding school that obviously attracted some very fancy people, like the ones I'd met at the Christmas party. He carried a chequebook with him everywhere; I almost never saw him use cash.

And he was strange. Of course, wizards have their sayings—"Muggles don't notice much, do they?"—but I noticed something. It wasn't the ordinary eccentricity of men I knew at the office, or my dad's old friends from the RAF. Lyall didn't wear weirdly patterned socks, or make inappropriate comments to me about my "feminine attributes," as so many of these men did, but he had a confounding combination of high intelligence and seeming ignorance of so many aspects of modern life.

He feigned understanding when I mentioned an article about the Prime Minister in passing, but I could tell he didn't even recognize the name. I asked him if he followed rugby. He asked me who rugby was.

Lyall thought vaccinations were taken by pills. I complained once about children who made a scene at department stores by the knocking people's bags down and running up the escalator, and he corrected me with an amused look. "You mean elevator, yes?"

"How would you run up an elevator?"

"You mean, they press all the buttons..."

"No, I mean, running up the 'down' escalator."

  
"The down elevator?" He laughed. "You know they go both ways."

"No, I mean the  escalator. " I said. "You know, the moving stairs."

Lyall opened his mouth and then closed it. He had the queerest look on his face for a moment; then his wry smile replaced it, like a pond absorbing a ripple. "I'm sorry, I think I misheard you," he said quietly.

We were walking through a ravine on a particularly warm afternoon that January. Bare branches reached towards us from both steep hillsides. A soft tapping sound issued from icicles dripping onto the path. I made sure to watch my step, avoiding puddles and the clumps of muddy snow left where shadows blocked the sun.

"Do you know, I think winter ought to be abolished," I said casually.

Lyall raised an eyebrow. "Perhaps you ought to move to the tropics instead."

"What—you like winter so much?"

"I do, in fact. It's my favourite season."

"How can you like all the plants dying, and being frozen to bits?"

Lyall looked around casually, as though checking to see whether the plants were actually dead. "You aren't frozen today, are you?" he asked.

"No, but that's because it doesn't feel like winter."

"Well," said Lyall, "it  is winter, so it feels like winter to me."

I scowled at him. "You know what I mean."

"I do know what you mean," said Lyall. "You mean to move the goalposts by excluding every day of good weather from winter, and, I presume, every day of bad weather from all the other seasons." He said nothing more as we reached a bend in the pathway and a brook came into view. The water bubbled and trickled between large rocks and broken branches.

"You didn't answer the question," I said.

"Which one?"

"Whether you liked all the plants being dead."

Lyall looked down at me through glasses slipping down the bridge of his nose.

"I don't see it that way," he said briskly. "Anyways, I prefer the cold." He stopped down to pick up a long twig and absentmindedly stir the water.

"So you're cold-hearted," I teased.

He stopped stirring and paused, staring at the ripples undulating outward from his twig.

"I've been told that before," he said in a weirdly light voice.

A trickle of guilt ran through me as though it had dripped off an icicle, onto my head and down my neck. I was a terrible hypocrite; so over-sensitive to the teasing of my housemates or co-workers that tears welled up in my eyes at the tiniest provocation, and yet this was not the first time I'd gone too far with Lyall.

"Lyall, I—I didn't mean—"

"I know," he said curtly. "Look. I think I saw a fish in that brooke. I've never seen a fish swim in a place like this in February."

There was something about Lyall that begged teasing—I felt the temptation and his friends at the party seemed to as well. Perhaps it was his rigidity, the way he never changed from one environment to another, like the stereotypical Englishman exploring the tropics in a suit and tie. Maybe it was his shyness, or the opacity of his emotions, but more likely, I just badly wanted his attention.

I followed Lyall to the water's edge, avoiding mud and chunks of ice.

"I don't see any fish," I said.

"Wait."

I waited and watched sheets of water as thin as a silk scarf surge over the rocks. A flash of orange caught in the corner of my eye and then disappeared around the bend in the brooke.

"Was that it?"

He nodded.

"What kind of fish was that?"

"No idea," he replied. 

"But aren't you the expert on these things?"

A shadow passed over his expression.

"I don't know everything," he admitted slowly. "In fact, the more I talk to you, the more I realize I don't know."

He looked at me plainly. His hands were twisting his handkerchief into a pretzel. 

I didn't know quite what to say to that. My mouth opened and closed.

Lyall looked down at his handkerchief, and, noticing at once how twisted it was, he smoothed it flat on the back of his hand.

"No one knows everything," I said. "If you knew everything, you'd know...you'd know what colour I'm thinking of now."

He eyed me critically. "You're thinking of blue."

"I was thinking of teal."

Lyall shook his head and smirked. "That's the same thing."

"It's absolutely not," I protested.

"What is it with girls," he asked, "that you can't ever use the normal name for a colour? Whatever happened to red and yellow, or white and black?"

"It's not girls," I said, "it's just people who use the correct words for things."

"Ah. I see," he said, wryly. "And here I thought we were disagreeing over whether the correct words to describe a colour were, you know,  _ colours _ . Not rose or eggshell or...alabaster or whatever else."

I shook my head, smiling. "I still you had a lucky guess."

"Try me again."

"Are you going to argue again over whether you're right?"

"Of course not."

I looked up at the sky and then down at my shoes, trying to think of a colour that wasn't too obvious. Lyall waited patiently.

"Alright, go," I said.

He looked at me, this time making eye contact so much more direct than he usually did that I felt pierced, somehow.

"Emerald green," he said softly. "Even after I said no more fancy colours."

"How did you do that?"

"Lucky guess," he said. His eyebrows were raised just enough for a tiny crease to form across his forehead.

"That's impossible."

"How else could I have known?" he asked. 

"Maybe I mouthed it by accident."

"You didn't," he said softly.

"Alright then, we'll try another," I said. "But I'm going to choose a 'fancy colour,' otherwise it will be too easy."

"If you must," said Lyall wryly. "But I don't even know what 'ecru' means—"

"You can't," I whispered, more to myself than to him. "How did you know that?"

I saw my reflection, pale and mystified in the lenses of his glasses. He pushed them up the bridge of his nose self-consciously.

"Does that amuse you?" he asked.

"There's a trick to it. I know there must be—"

"No tricks," said Lyall. "Would I trick you?"

We gazed at each other during a loaded pause, and then he raised his eyebrows just slightly and I burst out laughing as he smiled at the ground.

"Come." He motioned towards a fork in the path. "Why don't we go into the woods?"

"I've had bad luck with that before," I said with a giggle.

"Terrible luck. It was a good thing that tramp came along, or you'd have had to come across me even earlier."

"Thank goodness it saved me from meeting you in the normal way."

"Well..." Lyall slowed his pace so that I could keep up without hurrying. "I don't know what the normal way is, really."

"The normal way?"

"Er...to meet someone. Not that—" he thought for a moment. A dried-up leaf drifted down onto his shoulder. I wanted to brush it off, but I was too shy.

"—not that I don't—I mean, I just don't really meet girls that often. Anymore."

"...oh," was the only thing I could think to say. As we entered the woods, deep shadows fell across our path. It was cooler out of the sunlight; it felt more like winter.

"That was probably the wrong way to put it," he admitted. "I just—well, since I finished school I...I don't really meet people anymore. Except for work." He glanced at me, gauging my reaction.

"But you meet a lot of animals," I said, a little too brightly.

"Yes. Well. 'Meet,' in a sense."

We walked along in silence for some time, though the woods were far from silent; broken twigs snapped beneath our feet, and squirrels leapt from bough to bough above our heads, landing on branches elastic as trampolines.

Lyall spoke up suddenly as though he had only just been interrupted. "I only meant—that I wouldn't have met you any other way, you know."

"Probably not," I said. 

'I don't really, er, approach strangers."

"No, I don't either."

"Some people can," said Lyall, "but I wouldn't. I mean, I couldn't."

"Neither could I."

"But you approached me," he said,

"You weren't a stranger!" I laughed. 

"I wasn't?"

"Lyall. You'd just saved my life. I suppose I didn't have it in me to fear I'd run into a second kidnapper within thirty seconds of the first."

"I suppose that's fair enough," he said. The leaf was still on his shoulder. "And...I'm not a kidnapper, for what it's worth."

"It's worth quite a bit, actually," I said, with a grin.

"Ah." Lyall blinked and peered at me through his glasses, his shoulders hunched somewhat expectantly. I realized we had stopped walking.

"You miss Aberystwyth, don't you?" he asked suddenly.

It wasn't a strange question, but I felt taken aback, nonetheless.

"Yes," I said. "I do."

"You don't like Cardiff."

"I don't  dislike  it," I said. 

"But you don't like it," he stated flatly.

"I—no, not really," I admitted. "I'm not in love with this place."

"Then why don't you leave?" he asked. He sounded sincerely curious, though the question was almost facetious.

"I have a job here, Lyall. I can't just go home."

"But you want to go, don't you." He was shifting his weight from one foot to another. I could hear the rubber of his shoes shift against pebbles underfoot.

"Yes and no."

"What does that mean?"

"It means I don't know," I sighed. "I don't want to go home and live with my mam and dad forever and I don't want to stay here forever." A certain tightening of his mouth informed me of what he so wanted to say, so I added, "I mean, I know nothing is  forever ."

He looked up at the bare trees overhead. "No," he said softly. "Nothing's forever."

I studied his face. His skin seemed much paler than before, but perhaps it was a trick of the cold winter sunlight and the blue shadows criss-crossing the ravine. Lyall looked back at me and I quickly averted my gaze.

"You, er..." he began. "I suppose you miss your friends, back in Aberystwyth."

"Yes. Well—sort of." I looked down at my boots, thinking of Christmas, of Jeannie's constant outings to her parties and socials while I stayed with my parents and knitted cozies for the ornaments. "It's kind of complicated."

"Ah. I see."

"Do you."

"You don't want to talk about him," Lyall said quietly.

I raised my eyebrows. "Him?"

"Your—" his shoulders tightened and relaxed reflexively. "Your boyfriend."

Lyall removed his glasses and polished them with his wrinkled handkerchief. I'd never seen him without his glasses before. It seemed as though he'd removed an article of clothing far more intimate.

"Oh, no," I said. "I don't have one."

He looked skeptical, but said nothing further. We walked out of the woods and into a small clearing. Wooden benches set on either side of the path were soaked and scratched with initials and rude pictures. 

"I'd offer you a seat, but, er—" Lyall gestured to the benches.

"I'm fine," I said, scraping my boots against a large rock to wipe off the mud. Lyall stood two paces away from me, studying the ground.

"Hope," he said.

"Yes."

"I, er. I shouldn't have said that. I don't know why I said it."

"It's fine."

He shook his head. "I...should not have assumed..."

"It doesn't matter," I said, though I wasn't quite sure yet whether it did. "I assume things all the time."

"Yes, but—" he looked at me oddly, his eyes shining. "I mean, I suppose you've assumed correctly about me."

"Maybe not," I said. "Maybe there's all sorts of things about you I'd assume wrong."

This seemed to amuse Lyall more than a little; he even smiled a bit.

"Perhaps one or two things," he said cryptically. "At the most."

"I don't mind a surprise," I said, with a smile.

"Well, maybe someday," said Lyall.

I raised an eyebrow but he simply gestured forward and we walked on, past the clearing and over a small bridge to where a hill rose up and swallowed the skyline.

* * *

As the summer approached, I began wondering uneasily about how long Lyall would stay in Cardiff. He'd made it clear that he was there for work, and that it was not exactly his first choice of city to live in. I knew he would not stay in Cardiff forever—and hopefully, nor would I—but my heart sank at the thought of him leaving long before I could.

I would be given a week off work in July, but otherwise, my whole summer would be spent filing copying and collating at the office. My mother reminded me over the phone to be grateful that I had a job at all, while my father cheerfully noted that someday, when I was married and changing nappies all day, I would probably look back on my bachelorette days with some fondness. (I sensed a great deal of projection in that statement.)

My colleagues held an office cocktail party to celebrate the beginning of summer; it was also something of a reward from our senior partners for acquiring several profitable new accounts over the past quarter. We young secretaries really had nothing to do with any of it, but we were always welcome at these events to serve as eye candy, to blush and accept the embarrassingly overwrought compliments from our liquored-up bosses. I didn't love having to spend the evening with my bosses, but it was a nice opportunity to eat at a fancy restaurant on someone else's dime.

We were allowed to bring a date. I wanted to ask Lyall as a friend but I felt too embarrassed. Every time I thought of telephoning him to ask, the thought of the other girls listening in on my conversation and giggling became paralyzing. So instead, I attended the dinner alone and spent the night listening to men twice my age droning on about so-and-so from accounting whose in-laws were coming in from Swansea, and how difficult it was to get a decent mechanic without paying an arm and a leg. One of our newer hires, a man whose office was a converted broom closet, told me I had a piece of lint on my jumper, and before I could reply, he leaned in and stuck his hand on my breast to remove the imaginary lint. I sprung back instinctively, prompting him to get sullen and complain that I didn't know how to accept a favour. I longed to shoot Lyall a loaded glance, and watch the slight rise of his eyebrows. I'd like to say that I learned my lesson after that night, but I really didn't.

We continued socializing regularly into mid-June. Lyall and I saw each other at least once a week, sometimes twice. Usually, he invited me but sometimes I took the initiative at the end of our outing to ask when when we'd next meet. I didn't want to seem too clingy, since he had other friends in Cardiff (at least, I thought they lived in Cardiff) and I had none.

We went out for a walk by the lakefront in Roath Park on a sunny day in late June. It was hot—at least, for Cardiff—but Lyall wore his usual uniform of tweed suit, matching waistcoat and tie neatly fastened to his shirt with a gold tie clip. It was becoming a point of interest to see how little he could modify his wardrobe, no matter how broad a variety of weather he found himself in.

"How's work?" I asked him.

"Fine, fine. I'm actually going away for two weeks, this summer, to do some research."

"Where to?"

"Reykjavik," he said. "There's a conference on Bo—well, a conference I'm attending, and then I'm doing so more research in the field."

"You're so lucky," I teased.

"Not really," he said. "I'd rather not go to bed where the sun shines almost all night."

"Ooh, I forgot about that!" I said. "Wow. You really get to go everywhere, don't you?"

He smiled cryptically. I noticed a glimmer of sweat on his forehead; apparently, he  was  affected by temperature.

I heard a tinny jingle play from an ice cream truck that pulled around the corner. Immediately, a cacophony of children's voices sounded:

"Mammy, please!"

"Can we get one to share? Please?"

"I only have three pennies, it's not fair!"

"I want a chocolate one!"

Lyall nodded towards the truck. "Would you like one?"

I looked down and nodded, embarrassed at how obvious my reaction to the ice cream truck was.

"I was hoping you would," said Lyall. "I didn't want to be the only one."

Lyall ordered a chocolate cone for himself and I got a strawberry one; he paid for both without giving me a chance to protest, and for once, I didn't. I supposed we looked like a real couple, going for a walk and eating ice cream together and secretly I enjoyed it, though I wasn't attracted to him  that  way. (Or that's what I told myself.)

There were lots children running about and nursing mothers sitting on all the park benches, so we ate while walking past the lake. Two little girls in matching blue pinafore dresses were dragging on their mother's hands, trying to pull her in opposite directions. They reminded me of Jeannie and I. My mother used to dress us up in matching outfits, which annoyed Jeannie because it meant always having to wear hand-me-downs that were exactly the same as the clothes she just outgrew.

"There was a pond in a park I used to go to with my sister when I was little," I said. "I made up a lot of stories about there being mermaids in the lake."

"Did you?" said Lyall, sounding amused.

"Yes, and they would be nice stories when we were in front of my mother or my Nan, but then at night, when we were in bed, I told her really scary stories about sea monsters until she cried."

"It sounds like you were quite naughty."

"Yes, I was. But after Jeannie cried, I felt bad and let her stay in my bed since she was afraid of having nightmares. It made me feel really grown-up, as horrible as that sounds now."

Lyall licked the drippings from around the circumference of his cone. "All children are horrible sometimes." He dabbed at the corners of his mouth with his handkerchief. "I was a menace."

"No, you weren't," I insisted, with a smile.

"Well, not to any siblings, since I was an only child. But I gave my el—my housekeeper some trouble."

"I don't believe you. You were probably the most well-behaved child there was." As I spoke, a boy ahead of us yanked the handle of a kite out of his brother's hand, causing the little brother to scream. The older one ran away, laughing.

"I made a mess of my father's study," said Lyall. "I took all the books off the shelf and never put anything away."

"That's hardly what I would call being a menace."

"That's not how my parents saw it."

I laughed. "They sound awfully strict."

He shook his head. "No...perhaps it seems that way to you. I think—" he paused, gazing out into space. "I think they just weren't used to being around children." Lyall glanced at me, but looked away when our eyes met. "I wasn't around a lot of other children either. Not till I was at school."

"And that's where you met Ogilvy."

"Yes."

It was a conversation I'd remember in the difficult years ahead, when we so frequently came to odds over how Remus ought to be raised. Lyall didn't seem to know or understand children, reacting to Remus sometimes as though he were an alien, particularly when he was very little. He was sometimes too harsh, and other times tiptoed around Remus, treating him with kid gloves. We came to blows many times over this—but of course, when you meet his parents, you will understand a little better how Lyall came to be the way he is. 

We didn't walk far that afternoon, mostly making circles around the lake. As the sun sank lower and dipped behind the city skyline, the crowd in the park thinned out. Long purple shadows streaked the grass, while the lake swallowed up clouds and rippled them out across the wavy surface of the water.

"It's beautiful, isn't it," I said softly to Lyall.

"Mm," he responded, wiping his forehead with his handkerchief. He seemed unmoved by the landscape.

"I love this time of day. Would you say it's dusk?"

"Er—yes, I suppose," he mumbled.

"Though the sun hasn't set yet," I added. We were heading towards the exit onto the street. I could feel the tiny pebbles beneath my feet sink into the damp earth when I stepped on them.

Lyall spoke up abruptly. "Are you going away for the summer?"

"I'm only going home for two weeks in July," I said. "Otherwise, I need to be at work."

"Right." He was walking so slowly I had to shorten my own steps to remain at his pace. 

"I am coming back to Cardiff when the summer's over," he added.

  
Relief floated up through me, lifting the invisible weight I'd been carrying all evening. 

"There's another thing," Lyall said softly. "I mean—not  another thing—just that next year...I mean, in the fall...it would be nice if we could meet up again to...just to do things like this..." 

He very studiously avoided eye contact as he spoke.

"Of course!" I very nearly exclaimed. "If you're going to be at the same address...or otherwise, we can exchange our new phone numbers—"

"No, no, same address," he assured me. "Are you, er—?"

I smiled. "Yes. Unfortunately."

"Well." Our eyes met for a moment before his irises were obscured by the pinkish reflection of the lake on his glasses. "I do hope you find better accommodations soon."

"That' not very likely, I'm afraid. My dad is dead-set on Saint Dwynwyn's. He thinks it's the only reputable boarding house in Cardiff and he doesn't want me with a room mate, having no supervision at all."

He looked bemused at the mention of my father. "You  are  twenty-two though, aren't you?" he asked.

"Next week I will be. But don't bother explaining that to my father, he's horribly overprotective." I laughed. "He doesn't want my sister to move away from home at all."

Lyall didn't seem to think this was cause for laughter; he looked a bit nauseated. "Is he, er—" Lyall looked away, at the woods behind us. "It's probably none of my business."

"What?"

"Your father...is that why you aren't, er..."

"Aren't...?"

"Aren't seeing anyone," he mumbled quickly. "But it's not my business to ask."

I felt the heat rise through my cheeks as I shook my head. "No. Not at all. I mean...it was different, when I was in college...but now, I mean, he knows he can't, well he can't decide for us anymore." I giggled, more out of embarrassment than anything else. "He doesn't mind us going out with boys, so long as we don't...you know."

"Yes. No. I mean, er," Lyall blushed. "I suppose as long as you don't—stay out late."

Stay out late . Lyall, as you will soon learn, was very talented at coming up with gentle euphemisms.

"Well, he just wants us to be safe." I smiled at Lyall. "You know he would have been very unhappy to hear I was walking in the woods alone."

"I assume so." 

We had reached the gateway to the street. The sun had now sunk almost completely below the horizon, and the streetlamps had switched on. Lyall glanced at his watch.

"What time is it?"

"About eight forty-five," he said, his voice having regained its usual air of calmness and objectivity.

"Wow. We've been out for a long time, haven't we?" I reached for my purse, rooting through it for a bus token.

"I must have lost track of time," said Lyall. "Do you want me to call for a cab?"

"No, no, that's alright. I can take the bus."

"It's getting dark out," he said. 

"I take the bus all the time," I insisted. I had found my token beneath a lipstick and a tiny pamphlet entitled  _ THE DEVIL IS REAL: _ [sic]  _ Wichcraft and You _ _"_ that a street preacher had forced on me one morning when I waited at a crosswalk. 

"Still," he said. "I would feel better if I could go with you."

"Of course." I felt a tiny flurry of happiness; somehow, Lyall's concern felt less paternalistic and more genuine—or, perhaps, I was simply glad to share his company for another half-hour.

Lyall was mostly silent during our ride on the bus, which was followed by a transfer to another bus (he seemed somewhat mystified by the process of transfers. I chalked it up to his being from a very small town.) We parted that evening at a quarter after nine. I was glad to have made it back before my curfew, but disappointed to see him go. Two months seemed like ages and ages then; twenty-some years later, I would long for time to stretch out like taffy again, for a summer to last a lifetime. I wish, I  _ wish _ I could be twenty-two again, and unzipping my A-line skirt, lining up for the bathroom in my towel, turning off the transistor radio and going to bed with the window pane pushed up, listening to the crickets bowing a monotone and drifting off to dreams of mermaids swimming towards no destination.


	6. A Very Unusual Breed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for the long wait. The last few months have been super busy for me as I completed my undergrad thesis and was pretty drained, creatively, for much of the year. I have a lot more free time now and I will be updating ISOMK more regularly.

"I can't stay here, Hope. It's driving me crazy."

"I know, but—"

"No, you don't." Jeannie rolled onto her stomach, dangling one arm off the bed. Her fingertips grazed the carpet aimlessly. "You haven't lived here the past two years. I can't put up with him anymore."

"I'm not saying he isn't overprotective. I'm saying it's not much better once you move out."

"Yes, it _is_!" she insisted. "Look, I know they have rules and things at your boarding house, but at least you don't have to spend eighteen hours a day with them breathing down your neck, just _waiting_ for you to mess up."

"But they are breathing down my neck," I said. "The house matrons, the other girls. There's no privacy, none whatsoever. And everybody knows your business, and nobody ever lets you just keep to yourself."

"I don't want to keep to myself," she moaned. "I want to go out and have a social life and be a _normal_ twenty-year-old!"

I reached for a bottle of topcoat and began to brush it over top of my toenails. "You'll have less of a social life if you go move to a city where you don't know anyone."

She rolled her eyes. "I'll make friends."

"It's not that easy."

"Maybe not for you."

Jeannie must have noticed my facial expression, because she jumped to add, "I didn't mean it that way."

"Yes, but you _meant_ it."

"Not that way!"

"You can't say things like that and then try to take them back."

"You're being really over-sensitive," she huffed, pushing herself up onto her mattress. She turned to line her head up with the pillow and flopped down onto her back with such force that the bedsprings vibrated in protest.

" _Jeannie! I said stop doing that!"_ called my mother's voice, slightly muffled by the closed door.

"Doing _what?"_ she whined.

 _"_ You're going to pay for a new bed yourself, then!" responded my mother.

Jeannie turned her head sidewise to fix me with a plaintive stare.

I shook my head and screwed the cap back onto the nail polish.

"They won't leave me alone for three seconds," she said with quiet scorn. "Three seconds. And every time I want to go out, it's _Who are you going with? What time will you be back? Are there going to be boys?_ Like I'm twelve years old."

That Jeannie sometimes behaved like a twelve-year-old seemed somewhat lost on her. I was sympathetic to her complaints, and I did agree that my parents were especially overprotective of her, it didn't help her cause when she sounded so much like a child.

"Look," I said. "Do you want me to talk to them?"

"They won't listen to you. There's no point."

"They might," I said. "Daddy sometimes listens to me."

"He only _ever_ listens to you," she complained. "He thinks you're the perfect child."

"No, he doesn't," I said automatically, though I knew there was some truth to her statement.

"You know he does," said Jeannie as she held up her hand to examine her cherry red nail polish. "Do you think this is a chip?"

"Let me see."

She stretched over the edge of the bed, holding her hand out to me.

"It's a scratch," I said. "Do you have more of the same colour? I could fix it."

"No, I did it with Phyl at her house." She retracted her hand. "You know, I'll never get married if I can't even go on a date."

"You can go on a date," I sighed. "I know for a fact that Daddy doesn't—"

"No, but he always tries to make a big deal about when I come home and he never lets me stay out late!"

"I'm not allowed to stay out late either," I protested. "We have a curfew."

"But yours isn't nine o'clock," Jeannie pouted.

"Still," I said. "It's not a nice place to live. Trust me."

"Well, neither is living at home with Mam and Dad."

This argument continued on and off for the entire two weeks I spent at home. Jeannie wanted to move out to a boarding house like mine; my parents didn't want her to, and they wouldn't budge either on giving her a little more independence. I thought my dad was too strict with her, but I also knew he was too stubborn; he'd never change, not at fifty-seven. He was older than most of my friends' fathers, having married my mother when he was thirty-four and she was twenty-one. Being older, he was more old-fashioned and it drove Jeannie and I crazy. Particularly, Jeannie.

My Mam and I took a walk down the beach on my second last evening at home. She was barefoot, her sandals hooked around her index finger.

"I worry about you all alone," she said.

"I'm fine."

"I'm not worried you'll get into trouble, Hope. I'm worried you're going to be lonely and you don't have anyone to talk to."

"It's not like that," I said. "I have friends."

"Jeannie told me you don't like the girls in your house."

I stared at the waves. "That's not what I said."

"Well, you haven't invited any of them for a visit," said Mam.

I fell silent. She rubbed my shoulder gently.

"If you want to come home—"

"No," I said quickly, "I don't want to leave."

"We can set you up with a job here. It doesn't mean you'll be unemployed—"

"I want to stay in Cardiff," I insisted, even though my gut was telling me otherwise. "I like my life."

My mother pursed her lips. She knew I was holding back and there was nothing she could do. We walked in silence for some time, passing the Jones' and Perrys' whitewashed houses, where I used to go on play dates. Their daughters were all married now. Then, the pier, where a young couple eating ice cream was silhouetted against the setting sun. Finally when the beach narrowed into a tiny strip bordered by rocky cliffs, we turned around and headed back.

"I'm sure you know your sister is convinced we're holding her captive here," said Mam quietly.

"Not exactly," I said, diplomatically.

"Jeannie is very unhappy," said Mam. "I don't know what to do with her. We're trying to give her more freedom, Daddy and I, but she still thinks she's a prisoner in this house."

"She wants to do what I'm doing, Mam. You know she doesn't want to stay in Aberystwyth her whole life."

"I'm well aware of that," my mother replied. "But I can't in good conscience send her out to live who-knows-where, someplace Daddy and I haven't even visited, just to have an adventure."

"I'm sure that's not what she's asked for," I said. "She just wants to be like me."

My mother smiled a half-smile. There was something bittersweet in her expression.

"What?" I said.

"It's just..." she shook her head, her short curls bouncing in the breeze. "Jeannie can't be like you." She smiled again. "She's too much like me."

"What does that mean?"

She opened her mouth, paused and closed it again. I noticed the shallow lines bracketing her mouth, the crows' feet developing at the corners of her eyes.

"Mam, what does that mean?"

"I think you'll understand when you're a little bit older," she said, her smile infuriatingly cryptic. I knew there was nothing more I could ask, for she wouldn't explain and that was that.

We walked back to the house quietly. My mother put her shoes back on when we made our way up the scrubby grass and climbed a rotting staircase up to the road. We arrived back at the house as the sun disappeared and the street was cast in cool blue shadows.

I knew something was up because my Jeannie and my father were sitting quite formally in the living room, looking expectant. My mother and I shared a glance. She was wondering what Jeannie had done this time, and I was wondering what my father had done this time.

"Hope," said my father, as I tried to dart up the stairs. "Come here. We would like to ask you something."

I went back to the living room and leaned against the wall, my arms crossed.

"Annwyl, I don't know if this is the time—" my mother said softly.

"Nothing's the matter," said my father. "Actually, Jeannie and I were just talking about you, Hope."

I shot Jeannie a look, but she raised her eyebrows in response.

"Apparently, she has several vacation days saved up, and she would like to use them this fall."

"Alright..." I said.

"I want come to Cardiff," Jeannie said. "I thought...maybe I could stay with you and we could have a visit."

If all she had wanted was a visit, I doubted I'd be hearing about it from my father.

"I don't think there's anything wrong with that," said my mam. "How do you feel about that Hope? Won't it be nice to have your sister with you for a few days?"

"Mam, it's not just that," Jeannie cut in. "I want to see Saint Dwynwyn's. I want to see if maybe, if, if could go there."

My father sighed deeply. His hands rested on his belly, which had grown quite a bit from the day his wedding picture with my mother had been framed and hung above the mantle.

"Sweetheart," said my mam. "I think it's fine for you to go see Hope and have a nice visit, but Saint Dwynwyn's is a very different kind of place than home..."

"If it's fine for Hope, I can't see what's so wrong with it for me," Jeannie muttered stiffly.

"Well, you don't have a job in Cardiff, for one," said my father.

"Neither did Hope, until she got one."

"And you know I was lucky enough to have a friend who found her something there, but I don't know anyone in the _hairdressing_ business—"

"Daddy," I interrupted. "I don't think you're being very fair."

" _Thank you_ ," said Jeannie.

"I don't see what's wrong with Jeannie coming out for a few days and seeing how she likes it," I said. "If she hates Saint Dwynwyn's, then she'll know."

"I won't hate it," said Jeannie. "And anyways—" she daintily crossed her legs and sat upright properly—"there are other boarding houses for girls. It's not the only one."

"Your mother and I visited more than a few," said my father. "And not all of them provided the proper supervision."

"It's a matter of safety," said my mother.

""Well, if it's safe for Hope, then what's the problem?"

"It's only a visit..." I said, trying to redirect the conversation from what I hoped would not come next.

My father took off his bifocals, and polished them on his sleeve. Without looking at Jeannie, he said, "It's not _just_ a visit if Jeannie thinks we're making any promises about sending her off to live in Cardiff if she likes it."

"Now, Archie," said my mother. "I think she understands that it's just a visit...we don't need to make any decisions now."

"You won't make any decisions _ever_ ," whined Jeannie. "And you never let me decide anything for myself—"

"Jeannie—" warned my mam.

"You don't let me do anything!"

"That's not what this is about," said my mother. "And we don't have to make a scene, when Hope is only home for a little while."

" _I_ don't want to be home anymore at all!" she exclaimed.

"Don't you even think about how you're hurting _my_ feelings when you say things like that?" my mother implored.

"Your feelings? What about _my_ life?"

"Daddy," I said quietly, "I think I'll go upstairs."

"That might be best, pumpkin," he said. "This will be a while." Jeannie and my mother were now talking over each other, and my mother was beginning to cry.

I slipped up the stairs as inconspicuously as I could and hid in my room. The arguing continued for another hour (or so it felt), as voices rose, lowered and rose again like clashing arpeggios. First my father was lecturing Jeannie, then my mother interrupted, then the three of them spoke over each other. I could tell both Jeannie and my mother were in tears. Finally, the whole debacle ended when Jeannie stormed out and opened the door to our room; upon seeing me, she slammed the door and ran to the bathroom, locking herself in.

I followed her tentatively and pressed my ear upon the door.

"Jeannie," I said to the door. "Come back to our room."

She said nothing, but sniffed.

"Jeannie."

"..."

"Look, I didn't start this. I didn't do anything—"

"No, you never do anything wrong," she scoffed. Her voice was muffled by the door, but I could hear how bitter it was. "You're the perfect child and I'll never be as perfect as you and that's just the way it is."

"Jeannie, this isn't about me! You know it's not me that's keeping you home."

"Yeah, well, you never, ever try to stand up for me."

"I wasn't even home! I was out for a walk—"

"Oh, please. You saw that whole scene in the living room, and you just snuck out as soon as you could."

So she _had_ noticed, and taken note. "What was I supposed to do?" I whined, even though pangs of guilt were taking hold in my conscience.

She sniffed again. "You could have stayed. You could have said that you wanted me to visit, you didn't even say that."

"Well, I do want you to visit."

"Yeah, right." I heard a clicking; it was probably her long, polished toenails against the bathtub as she swung her feet back and forth, sitting on the toilet's lid.

"I do, Jeannie."

"You didn't say that to Daddy. You didn't say you thought I wouldn't have any trouble coming to Cardiff."

"I didn't want to bring that up," I said, more quietly.

"No. Of course not. Because if you actually said something in my favour, then _Daddy_ might have thought you disagreed with him."

"I just didn't want to start a fight, Jeannie."

"It was already a fight."

"Well, I didn't want to get involved," I said.

She went silent for a long minute and then broke out into a fresh sob. I felt awful. I knew I was wrong, and she was right. I never stood up for her to our parents, or even invited her to Cardiff. I just abandoned her to Aberystwyth, to my parents, who couldn't—or wouldn't—let her grow up.

"Jeannie," I said more softly. "Please. Open the door."

"Go away," she sniffed.

"Please. I want to talk. I'm sorry."

"I said, _go away_!"

"I won't go away. I'll stay here until you leave."

"I won't leave until you go away," she replied.

"Then I guess you'll never leave because I'm not going away."

"If you want me to ever leave the bathroom, then you have to go away."

"Then I guess you're never leaving the bathroom then!" I said shrilly.

"Then _you'll_ wait at this door forever!" she retorted before we both burst into giggles. My back slid down the door and I sat against it, laughing harder and harder until I felt I might burst. When the door opened without warning, I fell backwards against Jeannie's legs; she tripped and her bottom landed on the floor with a thump. We stayed like that, both of us on the floor, giggling. Her rosy cheeks were stained with tears and a watery trickle of mucus was coming out of one nostril.

She grabbed my foot and examined my ankle.

"You should try a depilatory cream," she said quite casually. "Since you don't get much time in the shower."

I shook my head. "I'm not using that stuff in my room. Eula says it stinks to high heaven."

Jeannie giggled and leaned forward, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "Alright, don't be cross, but I used it in our room once and I couldn't sleep there for three nights."

For some reason, I found this quite hilarious. I laughed so hard I began to hiccup, which set Jeannie off into a fresh round of giggles.

Our mother appeared through the doorway. "What are you girls doing in here on the floor?"

"We're—we're _catching up_ ," said Jeannie dramatically.

My mother sighed, shook her head and left. She was used to our antics and knew explaining it all would take years. My father, who had wanted a son very badly, said he couldn't understand what language we were speaking half the time, and the other half, he couldn't for the life of him know what on earth we were talking about.

How I had _missed_ Jeannie over the last few months. Eula was my closest friend, an old one from grammar school, but we weren't anywhere near as close as we used to be. She had gotten married very young and was living in Aberystwyth with her husband and baby, with no plans to ever leave. It seemed like all of my old school friends had melted away like marshmallows in hot cocoa, all happily married and having long since formed new social circles. I wanted friends, but I couldn't seem to develop a real bond with Val, Mabli, Norah or Edith (Irene, who I quite loathed, was out of the question.) I was glad to see that Jeannie was the same as ever, quite unapologetically so, when everyone else had changed.

Our two weeks ended at the train station, where I waited with my mother and Jeannie on the platform (my father was off at work.) My mam hugged me tightly for a long minute, as I would only see her next at Christmas. Jeannie gazed longingly at my luggage, but she wasn't angry anymore.

"I missed you," I said to Jeannie. "You will come and visit very soon?"

"Not quite," she said with a sigh, her perfectly permed curls ruffling in the breeze a train pulling out of the station left in its wake. "I'm not coming by until September. You know, I only have a week to visit and I'm not going to waste it during the summer. Aberystwyth's only good for one thing, and that's the beach."

My mother shook her head. "Aberystwyth is a very pretty place and I think you should consider yourself lucky to live here."

"Mam—" I warned quietly, placing a hand on her arm. "I'm looking forward to your visit. I know you didn't believe how messy our bathroom was, but you'll understand when you see it for yourself."

That made her smile, although she still looked sad. Her arms were folded across a pale yellow blouse patterned with painted rhododendrons. I knew she had spent a fortune on that shirt; it was real silk, and one of her absolute favourites. It touched me that she would wear it to the train station to see me off, when the blouse was usually reserved for very promising first dates.

The conductor stuck his head out of a window and shouted, "Now boarding, ten o'clock to Cardiff!"

"Give me another hug," said my mother, and I embraced her.

She patted my hair, and whispered, "Be safe. Don't go walking by yourself in the forest, or anything like that again."

I laughed. "I won't, I promise."

Jeannie came forward and we embraced. She smelled like lemonade and Soir de Paris.

"Have fun," she murmured to me. "Go do everything we can't do at home. And, Hope? If you get a boyfriend, don't you dare not tell me _everything_!"

"I will," I promised, and pushed away the unbidden thought of Lyall that surfaced in my mind. For some reason, he was making appearances in my thoughts rather more often than you would think, given that I hadn't seen him in a month.

The conductor repeated his warning, and I was forced to part with Jeannie and my mam. After several more announcements of our departure, the train actually began to move. I waved to Jeannie and my mother through the window until the platform began to recede from view, its backward thrust accelerating while I remained quite still in my velvet seat, unmoving, watching all the people and houses and shops and spires of my home set off on their own journey, without me.

* * *

It was five horridly dull weeks in Cardiff before September arrived. I usually loved the summer, but this time around it couldn't have ended fast enough. St. Dwynwyn's was about a thousand degrees inside—nobody had air conditioning at that time. We opened all the windows we could, but the house was old and some windows were stuck shut by multiple overzealous paint jobs or warping of the wooden window frames. One particularly gruesome Sunday, Val lay on the setee in the sitting room all morning, wearing only a negligee and fanning herself with an accordion-folded page torn from _Woman's Own_. Poor Val was caught first by a very irate Irene, whose magazine Val had partially mutilated, and god knows what sort of passive aggressive revenge Irene planned on taking. Then, when Mrs. Owens and Mrs. Winchfill returned from church around noon with an older female friend of theirs, they were absolutely horrified to have inadvertently exposed old Mrs. What's-her-name to an inappropriately dressed Val, who, aside from her silky negligee, was also chewing gum _and had her feet up on the pillows._ One of the pillows in question was cross-stitched by Mrs. Owens' own hand with a quote from Corinthians bordered by French knots; she was less than pleased to see this artistic masterpiece lowered by the profanity of serving as a footrest to Val's coral-painted toes. Needless to say, the rest of us girls were happily excused from bathroom duty for two weeks. Though I did feel sorry for Val's misfortune—she really was only trying to get some relief from the heat—there was no arguing that this incident was anything but eminently forseeable, as everyone else knew that Irene was the worst possible person to steal from, and that the matrons always got home from church around eleven o'clock and it would have taken very little effort to clear out of the sitting room by a quarter to.

"Honestly, Edith wouldn't have made a big to-do out of the magazine and I'm sure you would have let Val take a page out," Norah had commented to me under her breath as we watched Val trudge up the stairs to the bathroom, stony-faced and bitter. "But at least we don't have to clean the bathroom for two whole weeks."

This prospect did not cheer me up as much as it should have, for Val was the least thorough at cleaning out of all of us; she somehow managed to rearrange all of the grime and mess without removing any of it. Somehow, the wire curler and tangled hair imbroglio had worsened during my time in Aberystwyth; what had once filled a single basket now spilled over into two, and I think there were at least two pairs of tweezers caught up in the midst, like bystanders who try breaking up a fight, only to get involved in the tussle and make matters worse.

But there was cause for hope. Jeannie would be visiting very soon, and Lyall would be coming back from his summer travels as well. A rush of nervous excited coursed through me at the thought of seeing him again. He had told me he was spending two weeks in Greece, a month in Turkey and would then be travelling to Ireland, where he had several conferences and "demonstrations" to attend. Despite his assurances that this was all for his work, it seemed an awful lot like a vacation to me, and one I would have _died_ to go on.

I didn't know when exactly he would be arriving home, but he had promised he would telephone me when he did. We had exchanged a few letters during the summer; I knew he was probably busier than me, but I made sure never to write him back until I had received a letter from him. I didn't want him to think that I was too eager; moreover, I was embarassed at how blank, how boring my life must seem compared to his. Lyall's most recent letter had described his visiting Ardgroom, an ancient stone circle in County Cork:

_There are quite a few legends associated with these stone circles and few known facts. My colleagues in the region were eager to share their own stories of oddities that had occurred either in the vicinity of the stone circle or immediately following some sort of contact with the circle. Of course, it is difficult to separate fact from fiction, but I will admit my curiosity was piqued. We have stone circles at home too, of course, but it seems the Irish are much more willing to admit to the limits of their own understanding of exactly how permeable the boundaries are between reality and superstition._

I re-read his letters several times, all the while convincing myself that my enthusiasm for them was wholly inspired by my interest in travel and not, say, the inexplicably strong desire to hear his quiet, reedy voice and see his mouth twitch when I made fun of him. No, it couldn't be that; because if I fancied him, I would know about it, and if I didn't _know_ , than I couldn't fancy him. And all that sort of thing. Years later, it would make me laugh to remember the mental gymnastics I went through that summer, the summer of 1958. The summer of boredom, of romantic paperbacks from the library, of trying to save money and failing miserably, of giggling with Jeannie on the telephone while Irene tapped her foot impatiently, waiting for me to finish my call. It made laugh, and reminisce and then, one day, it would make me cry, when I knew that I was going somewhere Lyall couldn't follow.

I wish I had written him more letters; and that I had invited him to my company dinners and that I hadn't waited for him to call first. I wish I hadn't been afraid. I wish we could be together now, his arms encircling me like standing stones, immovable things, guarding the secret thing at the centre, or trying to contain it, offering it a home.

* * *

 

"Hello."

"Hi," I said softly. He was browner than he had been, though not sunburned; unlike me, he was capable of tanning properly. His suit looked brand new, with shiny buttons and no wear and tear on the elbow patches. I wondered whether he felt like I did when I wore a new dress for the first time.

"You've, er...you've spent time in the sun."

"Is it that bad?" I asked.

"No, no," he assured me. "Just a little pinker than usual."

"Do I look like a lobster?"

"Not unless I am unfamiliar with a very unusual breed of lobster," he said dryly.

We had decided it was too nice outside to stay in, so we went on a walk in the countryside, past little inns and cottages with hens clucking around out front of them.

"You're wearing good shoes," said Lyall.

"What?"

"Your shoes are good. For this sort of thing, I mean," he said awkwardly. "Practical."

I was wearing laced-up Oxford shoes.

"Oh," I said. We were out of practise, conversationally. It had been a long two months, and despite the letters we had sent each other, it was strange to be together in person again. I had spent so much time thinking about him over the summer, imagining what he would say when I saw something funny or especially interesting, that now that we were together, I felt almost embarrassed to look at him. Surely, I thought, he would have felt discombobulated if he knew how often I had been thinking of him.

"So," said Lyall. "How is work?"

"Fine." I kicked up a cloud of dust from the dirt road, watching it disperse and disappear into the breeze. "Work is work. It's always the same—at least mine is."

"Ah." He waited a beat before saying, "I wish you had somewhere more interesting to work. It seems like you might...enjoy it more somewhere else."

"I would."

"Not that I'm saying you aren't good at your work—" he added hastily.

"It's alright," I said. "I'm not very good at it, to be honest."

"No, no—I just meant—I think you could be very good at something more, er, more suited to your skillset."

"I'm a mediocre clerk at best," I said glumly. "It's no secret."

"I doubt that," said Lyall."

"Don't." I gave him a plaintive look. The sun gleamed off his light brown hair.

"Have you ever thought about doing something else?" he asked.

"Every day. But I'm not trained for anything else. I don't know what to do."

"You ought to do what you're good at," he said. "What comes most naturally to you."

I gave him a sad smile. "I'm not very good at anything. Not naturally."

"That isn't true," he said brusquely. "You have more than a few skills I haven't got, and those are only the ones I know about."

"Like what?"

He looked up and to the side, away from me, as if to think. He inhaled, about to speak, and I suddenly felt nervous.

"You know how to make conversation. That's not something everyone finds easy. Believe me."

"You can't make a job out of that, though. And I'm miserable at sales; I used to be a shopgirl, so I would know."

"No, I wasn't suggesting sales," said Lyall. "I don't think you would like that, and it would be a waste of your talents, anyways."

"I really don't know what talents you're talking about." As I spoke, we edged to the left so that a bright blue truck behind us could pass. A huge dust cloud blasted us in its wake; Lyall coughed into his handkerchief and I hastily tried to brush the dirt off my clothes.

"I'm sorry about that," he said, embarrassed. "I should have stood in front of you."

"It's alright. No harm done." I gave him a smile, which only seemed to embarrass him further. "So, you were saying..."

"I was—what was I saying?" he asked.

"You were telling me sales would be a waste of my talents, and I said I didn't know what that meant."

"Oh. Yes." He was walking quite quickly now; I had to speedwalk to keep up with his long strides. "Well, I thought—I thought you would, er...you might be more suited to something with children, actually."

"Really?" I asked, though he wasn't wrong. I loved children, I always had.

"Well, it's just a thought," said Lyall quickly. "I could be wrong, I don't know. You just—you seemed to me like someone who would be good with children."

"You have to have a lot of patience for that," I said.

"Don't you, though?"

He slowed down his pace to match my shorter stride, as though he had only just noticed that I was labouring to keep up with him. I looked at him just as he looked at me. We made eye contact, and surprisingly, he didn't break it.

"You have a lot of patience with me," he said softly.

I laughed. "You aren't a child."

"I've been called worse."

It was hard for me to believe at the time that he could have been accused of childishness, or immaturity; he seemed like the most grown-up person my age that I knew.

"Well," I murmured. "You were right. I do like children."

I could tell he was trying not to smile.

"It's nice to know I can be right, now and then," said Lyall, sounding much cheerier.

"You must be right about a lot of things," I said, "otherwise you wouldn't have a career in research."

"A very astute point."

We continued on until we reached a farm with two girls out front who looked to be about eight and six. They were manning a very lonely lemonade stand with drinks as well as muffins and brownies for sale. Both girls were eyeing us with naked anticipation.

"What do you think?" asked Lyall loudly enough that both girls could hear us from several yards away.

"Well, I think I'm _very_ thirsty."

"I think I am, as well," he said. We strolled leisurely towards the stall. A fat bumblebee fluttered just above the brownies, trying very hard (and failing) to look as inconspicuous as a fly.

"Hi!" said the older girl brightly. She yanked the shoulder of her younger sister back, forcing her to stop resting her elbows on the table and her chin in her hand.

"Hi," said the younger girl, more shyly.

"Hello," I said. "My friend and I would like two cups of lemonade, please."

"Okay, but you have to pay first," said the little girl matter-of-factly, but she was harshly shushed by her sister. They reminded me of Jeannie and I so much; how I wished she could be here, trying to maintain her composure with me.

"How much is it?" asked Lyall, who had taken his wallet out.

"It's two pence for one cup," said the older girl very casually, as though she had sold hundreds of cups that day.

"That makes _FOUR_ pence for _both_!" said the little girl with great pride.

"Very good," I said. After Lyall made a great show of very carefully counting out four coins to the girls, who were watching him with eagle eyes, we took our lemonades in plastic cups. While the two girls focused on the money, the bumblebee furtively plopped its fat behind onto a brownie.

"Thank you very much," I said, giving the girls a smile that would hopefully make up for the day's poor sales.

"Thank you!" said the little girl.

"No, you have to say, _you're welcome_ ," chided the older sister, as we walked away.

When Lyall and I reached the road, we looked at each other and smiled. Lyall raised his eyebrows by a hair and I giggled.

"Someone ought to tell them this isn't a prime location for retail sales," said Lyall.

"But just think of how we made their day!" I said. "They probably haven't had any other customers."

"It was a bit watery," said Lyall.

"I'm sure they filled the pitcher with ice this morning, and all of it melted."

"Mm," he murmured, and drained the rest of the cup in one shot.

"I was right about you, though," he said.

"About what?"

"About children." He paused. "You _are_ good with children. With talking to them, I mean."

I considered his comment. "I don't know if that's a compliment or an insult," I said.

"It was an observation," said Lyall. He inhaled and exhaled heavily. "Please don't take it the wrong way."

"I won't."

We had reached a bend in the road, where a small copse of trees cast a very welcome pool of shade over our heads. The road continued down a hill. The valley below was looking quite brown; the summer had been very dry. We paused to enjoy the shade, which was more refreshing than the watery-sweet taste of lukewarm lemonade.

"Do you want to go down, or turn back?" I asked.

Lyall checked his watch. "I think we're going to have to turn back," he said. "It's almost four."

"Do you have plans?"

"No, but I thought you said you needed to be home by six."

"Well, I don't _have_ to be home by six," I said. "But that's when dinner's served so if I come any later than six-thirty, I'll miss it. And they really don't like it if I start dinner halfway through."

"Oh," said Lyall, sounding amused. "So—if I were to take you out for dinner, then you wouldn't need to be home by six?"

"Hypothetically," I said, smiling. "Although it would depend on whether you actually _were_ to take me out to dinner."

He looked down and murmured, "I would like to."

"So would I."

"So," said Lyall, looking very pleased with himself, "shall we continue on a bit farther?"

"Yes, I think so."

It was later on, when we had finished our walk and gone out for dinner at a small family-run restaurant, that I mentioned my sister would be coming to visit at the end of September.

"She's going to stay in my room, " I said. "You've no idea the hoops I've had to jump through trying to persuade Mrs. Winchfill and Mrs. Owens to let her stay the night."

Lyall opened his mouth to speak but coughed instead; the room was very smoky. I had noticed that unlike most men at the time, Lyall didn't smoke, and he didn't stink of stale cigarettes like a lot of boys my age. It was a very appealing trait.

"I suppose you're paying for the privilege," he said, after coughing into his handkerchief.

"No, I but I did lead them on to believe Jeannie is a prospective renter. Girls like her are there target market."

"Is she not one, then?"

I sighed and slumped against the fraying upholstery of our booth. The ceiling above us was unevenly plastered and tattooed with brownish water stains.

"Jeannie thinks she is," I said. "But it's not going to happen. Not next year, and definitely not at St. Dwynwyn's."

Lyall looked at me curiously, but didn't ask why not. He ate a chip and then rested his clasped hands on the table before his plate.

"Anyways. I haven't asked about you."

"You've asked many things," Lyall pointed out. "I didn't want to talk too much about myself."

I giggled. "I don't think that's going to happen any time soon. You're a little bit...taciturn, you know."

Two creases appeared around the corners of his mouth, but he said nothing.

That was the gentle end of his sense of humour. It was only after I grew to know him better, particularly after we were married, that I met with the wicked end; he could be very naughty and very funny, but only a handful of people ever saw that side of him. I know what people say about him now; I know what people think, but they're wrong and they don't know him the way I do. Not even Remus does.

A waitress came to take our plates away. I had left a good deal on mine, having avoided the burnt bits of my shepherd's pie and made it only half-way through the gigantic hunk of uncooked broccoli that had been placed as a kind of afterthought next to the pie, but Lyall had wiped his plate clean.

"How long is she staying?" he said, all of a sudden.

"A week."

"Oh," he said. "I suppose you'll be busy for the week, then."

"Well, I still have to go to work."

"I meant, in the evening," he clarified. "You'll be busy." He fingered the edge of his cup absently.

"I suppose so. Why?"

"Well, I—I guess I won't call you that week. You know. To make plans."

"But we can still make plans," I said. "Jeannie can come along. I'm sure she'd love to meet you."

"Oh," he looked embarassed, "I don't know about that."

"You don't want to meet her?"

"No, I just—I don't know that she would want to meet me."

"Of course she does," I insisted. "She wants to meet the person who saved my life!"

"Well," he said tentatively, looking down at his knees. "That."

I wondered why he seemed so awkward whenever I brought that up. Most men I knew would be very proud to have a story like that (particularly my father, who _never_ shut up about the war.)

"Anyways," I said. "If you'd like, we're going to go out for brunch on the last Sunday to a really cute place I found. You can come with us, if you'd like." Jeannie and I were also going out dancing the night before but I was not going to ask a man out to a dance, and particularly not _Lyall_ , of all people. "Will you come?"

"If you'd like," said Lyall noncommittally. "If it's alright with your sister."

"It will be," I said.

The waitress arrived at our table again. Her yellow dress and white apron were faded and stained with coffee. "Have you thought about dessert?" she said.

I looked to Lyall expectantly.

"Does a man in the desert think about water?" he said.

* * *

So, Jeannie was to meet Lyall. What I hadn't told him was that the whole thing was her idea. She had gotten it into her mind that I had mentioned him a few times too many for my feelings towards him to be entirely platonic, and wanted very much to meet my "boyfriend" (WHICH HE WAS NOT, I wrote and underlined three times in my journal that night.) It was to be the beginning of a very long and complicated relationship between the two of them. I won't say they never had their disagreements, or that I always liked the way they spoke of each other. Family is hard. Family you neither grew up with, nor chose is the hardest. But Lyall was generous and took her in when Jeannie was in despair; and many years later, Jeannie would look after him in his hour of greatest need. Perhaps I should have done more to bring them together, while I still could.

Or, perhaps I should have warned Jeannie about Irene and the flowered shower cap.


	7. When Jeannie Met Lyall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter comes later than promised, but it's almost 10,000 words. Enjoy.

The Cardiff Bute Road station was crowded that afternoon because of some kind of conference occurring in the city; a lot of men in grey suits clutched their briefcases close as they pushed their way through the crowd, impatient to leave the station. Bowler hats bobbed up and down through crowd like buoys on a string; everyone wanted to go in the same direction, except for me. I was trying to get into the station so I could meet Jeannie at the platform.

I was late and my reason was stupid as ever: I had stapled a great number of important documents the wrong way, and Mrs. Morris made me stay behind to remove all of the staples and re-do the job, which also involved re-filing all the documents in the overstuffed cabinet. Jeannie's train arrived at half-past six, and it was already a quarter to seven when I pushed my way through the last cluster of businessmen to find Jeannie on the platform.

She was all the way at the other end of the platform, but we immediately recognized each other. I waved to her, and she waved back with an off-white gloved hand and, her carpet bag swinging in the other.

She ran towards me and we hugged.

"You look wonderful," I said truthfully. At that time, Jeannie always dressed like a fashion plate, and she pulled out all the stops on special occasions. "How are Mammy and Daddy?"

"Oh, the same," she said offhandedly. "Tell me my hair doesn't look absolutely horrid right now. The seat back was just at the worst possible height. It probably looks like a pancake from behind." She twirled around, her long, pleated skirt briefly flaring into an umbrella.

"It really doesn't," I said. "Do you want to go back and put your bag away right now, or go get something to eat?"

"I want to go see your house!" Jeannie insisted. "I want to meet your infamous matron, Mrs. What's-her-name—"

"Matrons, plural. And you really don't," I laughed. "Trust me. Why don't we drop off your things and then go for a walk?"

"Alright," said Jeannie, "I have a lot to tell you. It's awful not being in school anymore, there's no one to gossip with."

"Didn't you say you hated gossip?" I asked, with some amusement. 

Jeannie batted at my arm. "Only when it's about me," she said, with a wink.

We spent the afternoon catching up on the patio outside a café. Jeannie ordered a hot cocoa and I ordered a coffee and paid for both of us, not so much because she was a guest as because she was my baby sister and it was just the way we were.

"Don't you want to hear about Ned?" she asked, trying not to smile.

"I only heard his name once..."

"Well, you're going to hear his name quite a bit, because he asked me to go steady two weeks ago," Jeannie said, with only a hint of smugness.

"What? You didn't say anything to me on the phone. Why I didn't I hear about this?"I knew Jeannie enjoyed the histrionics of my reaction.

"Well, I wanted to save something for us to talk about when I came," Jeannie said, sipping her cocoa. She left a red kiss-shaped imprint on her mug and put it down on the table. "And also, I didn't want to say anything when Mam and Dad were listening."

"I thought they liked his family," I said. Ned had a sister I had been friendly with in school; they were well-behaved and lived in a well-to-do neighbourhood. My father thought they were a good influence on Jeannie and I.

"They do," said Jeannie. "But I want a few more weeks to plant good ideas in their head about Ned before I tell them we're going out."

"They're going to find out anyways," I warned her.

"Don't worry about it," Jeannie said. "I know what I'm doing. Anyways, what else is new..." She leaned back in her chair, throwing her head up to think. Above her, a skinny elm tree swayed in the breeze. The sun glowed through yellow and orange leaves, winking through the canopy as individual leaves fluttered, overlapped and parted. I wished I was an artist and I could draw them; sadly, I only ever had any aptitude in drawing people; I was hopeless at natural subjects.

"Oh, yes," said Jeannie. "Flora's expecting, did you know that?"

"Really?" I leaned forward in my seat. "Didn't she only just get married?"

"It was a few months ago," said Jeannie.

"Still,"I said, wrapping my hands around my coffee mug for warmth, "it seems very soon. Maybe because she always looked so young..."

"Well, we went to a film together last week, and you should see her now," said Jeannie. "She's not really showing yet but her cheeks are all puffy and she has that look, you know? I could completely tell, even before she announced it."

Jeannie took great pride in predicting major events in other people's lives, and she had a knack for it; it was one thing to predict that a newly married couple might be expecting, but it gave us all a great fright when she said one evening that she couldn't explain it, but she had a terrible feeling about a certain famous actor, and the next day we found out that he had been killed in a motorbike crash. After that, my friends and I started taking her predictions more seriously, and she was right more often that not.

"A lot of people are having babies now," Jeannie said.

"I know. I mean, I can count on one hand how many girls in my year aren't married now."

"Don't feel bad," Jeannie assured me. "When you have babies, their childen will already be gawky and skinny and yours will still be chubby and cute."

"Jeannie! You can't say that—"

"Oh, Hope, don't take things so seriously." She laughed. "I'm just saying, there's no rush."

We gossiped about other people for a while as the shadows lengthened. A waitress came to take our plates and mugs away, and we began to walk home, Jeannie following in my footsteps. I noticed that she had not once mentioned Lyall yet, and this filled me with great dread; if she was saving the coming cross-examination for when we were in private, this meant it would be extremely thorough.

"Is this yours?" asked Jeannie, cocking her head up to take in the prominent Queen Anne house squeezed awkwardly between row houses of a drastically different architectural style.

"Mmhm. Shall we go inside? It's getting very cold."

Before I could unlock the door, Mrs. Owens pulled it open dramatically.

"Hello, ladies," she said. "Come in, take off your coats." She took Jeannie's coat and gloves from her and daintily hung them up in the closet. This was not a service normally provided to those of us who lived in Saint Dwynwyn's.

"I'm Jeanette Howell," said Jeannie, proffering a manicured hand. Mrs. Owens shook it and smiled broadly at her.

"It's lovely to have you as a guest in our home," said Mrs. Owens. I rolled my eyes behind her back; Mabli, who was coming up the stairs at that moment, caught my expression and raised her eyebrows.

"Mabli," said Mrs. Owens, who was facing completely away from the stairs and had only detected her extremely quiet ascent to the hallway through X-ray vision and/or ultrasonic radar, "This is Hope's sister, Jeanette. She is going to stay with us for a few days."

"Hi," said Mabli, sounding bored. She disappeared into the kitchen as quickly as any wizard I would ever see Disapparate.

Mrs. Owens patted Jeannie's shoulder with enough force that Jeannie involuntarily shrunk away from her.

"I'll introduce you to the rest of our girls tomorrow at breakfast. We all eat breakfast and dinner together, barring some occasional exceptions," she said, with an eye towards me. Jeannie followed me up the stairs, her heels clicking on the uneven wood steps.

I hadn't bothered to tidy my room in anticipation of Jeannie's company. There was no deceiving someone who has shared a bedroom with you since you were babies; Jeannie's standards of neatness were also considerably lower than my own. This had been the subject of many an argument in years past, and honestly I still don't understand how she could have borrowed my clothes and then left them on the floor near an open jar of nail polish, but that's actually not the story you came here to read.

"It's pretty," she said, trailing her fingers over the tufted detail on my bedspread. "Look how much light you get."

"I know. I like this room," I said. "And I don't mind that the ceiling is slanted. I don't really need that much height at the sides, anyways."

"No, the ceiling is charming," agreed Jeannie. She sat down on my bed and pulled off her shoes, kicking them unceremoniously aside before unclipping her garters and rolling down her stockings. "I like how you've hung the pictures over there."

I had tacked up a neat grid of pretty photographs cut from magazines; a colour photograph of Niagara Falls with a rainbow above it, an Art Nouveau-style illustration from a perfume ad, a picture of a Christmas wreath woven from wild brambles and laced with sprigs of heather, and several others. I had several photographs of family and friends that I kept in protective sleeves in my desk; I didn't want to punch holes in them, or get interrogated about the subjects by the matrons after they snooped through my room.

"You have to decorate your room," I murmured as I sat down. "Otherwise, all the walls are blank and the bed is hard and you lie in bed at night feeling like you're in a way station, and it isn't home."

Jeannie lay back on my pillow and said nothing. She took a tissue from my nightstand and wiped her remaining lipstick off. Then she rubbed her eyes.

"I'm actually really tired," she said. "Can we turn in?"

"Of course. I'll show you the bathroom so you can shower," I told her, but neither of us made a move towards getting off the bed. Beneath us, the floorboards muffled the sound of a comedy program on the radio punctuated by drawers slamming. Two girls were arguing; probably Val and Norah. The lace curtains shifted in the invisible breeze, beckoning the waning moon.

* * *

 

I wish I could gossip with her again.

* * *

 

We shared the little bed beneath the sloping attic ceiling. Jeannie wanted to be on the outside with me next to the wall because, in her words, "I get up to pee way too often." She used to wet the bed when we were little. She wasn't even embarrassed by it at the time, because our Mam used to make her feel very special about it. She said things like, "Jeannie only has accidents because she drinks all her milk, just like Mammy asks" or my personal favourite, "Some little girls only have room for very dainty little bladders because their hearts are so big." Now, I don't think children should be punished for wetting the bed because it's involuntary, but there does come a point at which you are actively encouraging them and my mother may have crossed that line several times.

"I miss this," Jeannie murmured, turning over to face me.

"Me too."

"No, really."

"I know."

I reached forward and felt for her gold-plated locket, trying to wedge my fingernail into the tiny catch.

"You always liked playing with that," she whispered.

"I wished I had one," I responded.

"I wished I had your pearl earrings."

We lay in the cramped space, our long hair merging into an indistinguishable mass. Jeannie's breath tickled my earlobes.

"I've decided I'm not going to ask you about him," she whispered. "Not until after I meet him. I know you won't tell me anything now, anyways."

"There's nothing to tell."

She ignored my dismissal. "After I see him and you in person, you aren't going to be able to lie to me."

"Why do you think I'm lying?" I insisted.

"Oh, come on, Hope."

"Why?"

"Hope," she whispered matter-of-factly, "You didn't mention any other friends in Cardiff."

"It's hard to meet people when you're not in school—"

"And you kept bringing him up. All summer, it was 'I went there with Lyall,' 'Lyall says this—' "

"I was only home for two weeks, so it couldn't even have been all summer!" I whispered fervently.

"Well, then you must have brought him up a hundred times over two weeks because it felt like all summer."

"I did not."

Jeannie giggled. "I don't know why you won't just admit it—"

"There's nothing to admit."

She emitted a very smug, "Mmhmm."

I felt my face become very hot and though Jeannie couldn't see me in the dark, she was probably close enough to feel the heat emitting from my cheeks.

"I don't like him."

"Then why are we going to see him next Sunday?"

I let go of her locket and crossed my arms over my chest. "I meant I don't like him that way."

"Methinks the lady doth protest too much."

"You're the one protesting," I pointed out quietly. "You keep insisting—"

"—and you keep denying it. Because it's true," said Jeannie. "And if it wasn't, then you know I would be able to tell when we meet him tomorrow, and that would be that. End of story."

"Well, it will be," I whispered, and fell silent. End of story. Wouldn't that make a fantastic tale, the one about the girl who kind of sort of liked someone, but he didn't like her back and that was that? The one without any magic, or any werewolves or flying carpets. Of course I didn't have the slightest idea about any of that, but I still felt a heavy sensation in my abdomen, something stony and uncomfortable.

If Lyall were interested in me, he would have asked me out by now. It had been a year since we met, and still he hadn't made any overtures towards extending our friendship to something more intimate. It was hard to imagine him asking anyone out, let alone me; he seemed so independent, so set apart from any of the boys I knew from home who were spotty and overeager, pushy at the cinema and grabby in the car park afterwards. Lyall was aloof; I felt (at that time) like he existed in a separate sphere from those of us who lived down on the ground.

Jeannie's breathing had deepened and slowed. She was asleep. I felt less annoyed with her now that she was only a warm body lying next to me, with silky hair intertwined with my own. I wrapped an arm around her and nestled close to her and the last thought I had before I drifted off was how nice it was to touch another person again.

* * *

The next morning I awoke to the sound of a door slamming open violently. I sat up reflexively and bumped my head against the sloping ceiling, which made me hypersensitive and aggravated to begin with. Jeannie was already up and about, applying eyeshadow; she spun around from the mirror to see what was going on.

"What the hell is this?!" demanded Irene. She was standing in the doorway in her peach dressing gown, wearing high-heeled slippers that I had overheard the matrons privately refer to as "coquettish, and not in a good way." A flowered shower cap dangled from two pinched fingers; she held it before her as though it were a rotting carcas with a halo of flies.

"It's a shower cap," I said. "What—why are you barging in here—"

"Yes, I bloody well know what a shower cap is!" she said shrilly. "It's my shower cap, you know that perfectly well."

I sighed, anticipating some form of melodramatics; with Irene, there always were. 

"I'm not referring to the shower cap," said Irene. "I'm referring to this—" she thrust the cap so close to my face that I could see what exactly she was referring to. It was a water droplet.

"Hope—" said Jeannie cautiously.

"What do want, Irene?" I said, ignoring her.

"There's water on this," she stated furiously. Her head itself looked like the flowered cap, with her round pin curls plastered all about her head like little rosettes. 

"Okay. There's water on it."

"I did not take a shower this morning!" she insisted. "I didn't shower last night either!"

"So—"

"Somebody else used it! And I know it was you, Hope."

"I just woke up!" I said angrily. "You saw me, you were the one who woke me up, how do you know it wasn't someone else?" 

"Hope," said Jeannie again. "Can we just—"

"Not now, Jeannie." I said. "I didn't touch your shower cap, Irene—look at my hair. It's not even done, why would I use a shower cap?"

"I don't know, and I don't care," she huffed. "I saw you go into the bathroom before me and after you left, I went in there to take a shower and there was water on my shower cap."

"I didn't use the bathroom this morning," I said. "Honestly, Irene—" I took a deep breath and tried to remain serene. "Please. You need to calm down. You don't even know someone didn't just accidentally flick some water on it when they got out of the shower, without even using it."

"I saw you do it," said Irene. "I saw you, you're going to tell me to my face that I'm a liar?" 

"I didn't—" 

"That's what you're saying, then," she said smugly. "You're saying I'm a liar." 

"I didn't say that," I insisted through gritted teeth, though I knew for a fact, based on past experiences, that Irene was not only a chronic liar but a histrionic narcissist who deliberately started drama only to complain constantly about how much drama there was in her life.

"Oh, really?" she said, and flicked the shower cap, scattering several droplets of water onto my bedspread. Behind her, I could see Jeannie's arms crossed over her chest, face arranged into somber pout. "So I just made it up then, that's what you're saying, isn't it?"

"Irene, for the last time, I have no idea what happened to your—"

"I used it," said Jeannie coolly. Before Irene eruot, Jeannie added, "It was left on a hook on the bathroom door. I thought it was for people to share."

Irene looked from Jeannie to me, and then back to Jeannie. Her facial expression revealed what she was thinking: Actually, they do look enough like that it could have been Jeannie. No, this doesn't mean I have to be any less upset. Yes, I can actually use this to cause even more unnecessary drama than I had originally planned. 

"You used it," Irene said, now facing Jeannie.

"Yes. I'm sorry," she replied, her voice icy but civilized. "Like I said—I mistakenly thought it was for common use."

"Well, it wasn't," Irene said slowly. "It. Was. Mine. And you just took and it used it. Now it's disgusting and I have to throw it out and buy a new one."

"There's no need for that," I said hurriedly, trying to smooth out what I knew would inevitably end in a volcano. "It's plastic, you can just wash out the inside and it'll be like new—"

"No, it won't!" she whined. "Is this what you do, then? You just go around using other people's things without asking, all the time?"

Before Jeannie could make things worse, I stepped in. "Look, I think this was all a misunderstanding—I told Jeannie the towels and the handsoap were shared, so she may have thought it was another one of those things, I'm sorry I didn't—"

"She won't even apologize!" Irene said.

"I just did," Jeannie cut in. 

"Look—it's ruined" (it was perfectly fine) "and now you expect me to pay for a new one?"

"There's nothing wrong with it," said Jeannie.

"You wore it!"

"Irene, please. It was an honest mistake and Jeannie's very sorry. You know she's not used to this house—" 

"Then it's your fault for not explaining any of the rules," Irene insisted. "I think it's only fair that you pay for a new one."

"I don't see as there's anything wrong with the cap, perhaps it's your head that needs replacing—"

"Jeannie!" I cut her off before Irene could mentally process what she'd heard. "Look, Irene, I'm really sorry that this happened, alright? But you knew you weren't supposed to leave your personal things in the communal area—"

"I can't believe this place!" she sulked. "I leave one thing in the bathroom even one time, and already people are stealing my stuff."

Despite my best efforts to control myself, I rolled my eyes. Irene made a regular habit of leaving her personal things out in common areas just so she could throw a temper tantrum when other girls inevitably touched her belongings.

"Nobody stole anything," Jeannie said. Her facial expression was most comparable to a granite statue of an ancient queen who has just found out her first-born son had been abducted by the enemy. It was an expression Jeannie normally used only on boyfriends right before a nasty breakup was to occur.

"How can you say that to my face right after you stole my shower cap and used it without permission?" Irene sneered. "That's against all of the house rules, you know. Maybe you aren't from here, but we actually have a certain way of doing things—"

"Girls!"

We all spun to face the doorway. Mrs. Winchfill was standing in it, wearing her flannel dressing gown and ugly slippers that barely concealed the veins all over her bony feet. Around her neck, she wore a cord attached to a pair of reading glasses, which she used to clip her toenails and read the Bible and whatever else she did for personal amusement.

"What in the world is going on in here?" she exclaimed. "There are other people in this house, you know!"

"Hope's sister took my shower cap and ruined it," said Irene sadly, sniffing back a nonexistant tear. "Now I don't have anything to use for my hair."

"She left it out in the open and I thought it was for sharing, like the towels," said Jeannie. "And it's not ruined at all."

"Mrs. Winchfill, I don't think it's fair that I should have to have my things stolen just because Hope didn't tell her sister the rules here," Irene pouted.

"That's not what happened, Irene," I said, crossing my arms over my chest. I felt very exposed in my nightie with no robe on. "It was all a misunderstanding—"

"Well, my understanding is that there's other people in this house and they are trying to sleep, and this kind of noise is not acceptable at this hour of the morning," said Mrs. Winchfill. "And both of you girls know that we don't allow this kind of fighting here. Irene, go back to your room, and stop leaving your things all over the place. Hope, make sure your sister understands the rules of this house; that was your responsibility. I'm very sorry for this, dear," she said, placing a hand on Jeannie's shoulder. As she leaned closer to Jeannie, Jeannie reflexively leaned away. "This is an unfortunate incident not at all representative of our life here at Saint Dwynwyn's, I hope you understand that."

Irene shot me a death glare and thenspun around and left in an angry huff, walking downstairs as

Jeannie gave me a plaintive look.

"It's alright now," I assured Mrs. Winchfill. "I think Jeannie understands."

"Well—" she looked around the room, as though trying to find another person to get into trouble. "Please keep it down. We can't have this kind of noise at this hour of the morning, especially when poor Mabli isn't feeling well." 

"Mabli's not well?" I asked.

"She'll be alright with some bed rest," said Mrs. Winchfill. "Must have eaten something funny at that mixer she went to last night." With that, she left, and Jeannie rushed to shut the door behind her.

"Well," Jeannie exclaimed, "that Irene certainly is a certified—"

"Shh! Don't say that in here," I whispered. "Sometimes people listen in."

"If anyone's listening, they'll have heard how bloody insane that—"

"Stop it." I wrapped my hand over her mouth, and she yanked it off of her. "Do you want to get me kicked out? Honestly—"

"Oh, relax," said Jeannie. "You saw what happened, I didn't do anything wrong."

"You should have asked about the shower cap," I said through gritted teeth.

"Are you honestly going to sit here and give me another lecture like Miss Uppity You-Know-What?"

"No," I sighed, "But what you did was not very smart, because I warned you that there were girls in here who get very particular about their stuff."

"If she's so particular, then why does she leave it lying around?" Jeannie asked smugly. She sat down at the chair before my desk and picked up her eyeshadow palette.

I tried to speak as quietly as possible. "Because that's what Irene does, Jeannie. She does it on purpose and she knows it—"

"That's ridiculous—" 

"But either way, I have to live with her," I said. "So don't be a smart aleck."

"I'm not a smart aleck," she said sulkily, more to herself than anyone else. I felt her for, I really did. It seemed like anywhere Jeannie went, people wanted to stifle her and restrain her. She was creative in a city where nobody cared; she had a sense of humour, but was surrounded by humourless ninnies half the time; she was a wanderer with no money to travel. Later on, Jeannie would say, "I wish I was born ten years later," and I would agree with her. But of course, if she had been, we would have had ten fewer years to spend together. 

Jeannie and I spent that Saturday window shopping. The temperature had dropped and it was windy out; dried-up leaves were starting to blow off of branches and scatter in the street. When it was too chilly outside, we wet out and splurged on hot cocoa and crumpets because neither of us felt like returning to Saint Dwynwyn's for lunch; I was also concerned that Jeannie might need more time to cool off before possible exposure to Irene. 

Luckily, when we returned that evening for supper, Mrs. Owens announced that unforunately, Edith and Irene would not be joining us that evening as they had "other engagements elsewhere." This was no surprise, as Irene almost always had social plans on the weekend, but it was very surprising for Edith. We all gossiped and speculated on whether Edith might possibly be on a date, but Mrs. Winchfill sternly chided us for indulging in these trivialities.

"Edith is with her professor, preparing for examinations," said Mrs. Winchfill. "Her midterms are falling early this year. And I don't think a lot of this talk is appropriate," she said, even though Mrs. Winchfill was vulture-like in her ability to prey on any scrap of possibly scandalous information about us girls. She had asked me several times over the past year who "that young man" was, and why I went out with him so often, as though she had never heard of socializing in her life.

"Okay, the matrons aren't great," Jeannie admitted to me later, in the privacy of my room, "and Irene is a lunatic, but it's still nice to be away from home."

"But this becomes your home," I said, "and then all you want is to go visit Aberystwyth."

"If you hated it so much here, you would go home," said Jeannie. "Obviously, you must like it here because you're choosing to stay."

"I have a job here."

"You could easily move back home and find one there," she said. "You know that Mam and Daddy would be thrilled if you did."

It irked me because she was right. Of course I could move home if I wanted to; I could easily go home and live the way Jeannie did, but I didn't want to. But it was hard to describe what was keeping me in Cardiff without ceding to Jeannie's complaints about life at home unless I admitted what I really liked about Cardiff, which would involve an uncomfortable degree of self-reflection, as well as giving in to an awful lot of teasing.

On Saturday night, Jeannie and I went out to a dancehall. We both dressed to the nines just for the fun of it, and I made her promise that she wouldn't find some boy and disappear on me.

"Oh, Hope, why do you have to be a stick in the mud?" she complained, only half-joking.

"Because I promised Mammy that I would keep an eye on you—"

"Well, Mammy isn't here is she?" said Jeannie airily, as fished a dime out of her purse and popped it into the jukebox.

"Don't bother," I said. "The que's too long. It'll be tomorrow by the time your song plays."

"Then I guess we'll have to stay here all night," said Jeannie. She threw her heard back and laughed.

We danced late into the night, only stopping to grab drinks and go to the bathroom to reapply our make-up. Jeannie was tactful enough not to bring up Lyall all evening, though I knew it was only because she was going to grill me after meeting him the following day. We returned to the boarding house at midnight, which was long past curfew, but I knew the matrons wouldn't say anything so long as they were trying to attract another customer.

When we finally finished showering (sans Irene's shower cap, of course), Jeannie and I collapsed into bed. I had to shush her because she was unknowingly humming a song stuck in her head, and she kicked my cold feet off her legs, where I had placed them to try and glean some warmth. I was so tired that I didn't even feel any butterflies as I fell asleep, the way I usually did when I knew I was going to see Lyall the next day. 

* * *

 

"I don't think you should wear that," I said to Jeannie. "The place we're going to is really much more casual." 

She was dressed in a silk blouse with a hand-embroidered collar and a skirt that could only be dry-cleaned, along with what was obviously a brand-new pair of stockings. 

"I don't do very casual," said Jeannie. "This is just what I wear."

"You're going to feel overdressed," I warned her as I twisted my hair into rolls and pinned them down. "Hairspray." 

She handed me the canister, which she had obviously been using all week as it was quite a bit lighter than I remembered.

"Are you sure?" she teased. "Don't be jealous. You know, you could dress up nicely too."

"I'm not jealous," I said, a little more defensively than necessary. I shook the can and attempted to spray my hair; nothing came out. "And anyways, I couldn't dress up like you do, I don't have clothes like yours."

"I would lend you something," Jeannie said, with the air of a benevolent philanthropist addressing an impoverished orphan. I shook the canister even harder and it suddenly shot out a wet puddle of hairspray directly onto my scalp. Jeannie smiled as I patted it dry.

"I told you, you're overdressed. And I'm not jealous because I'm not going out with Lyall—"

"I didn't say you were going out with him, I said you fancied—"

"—and even if I did," I added, with a little more force, "you wouldn't be interested in him. He's not your type."

"Oh, really?" said Jeannie, sounding amused.

"Yes, really. " I managed to spray a manageable cloud onto my hairdo. "Now let's get breakfast, I'm starving."

"You're changing the subject," she sang tunelessly.

"This subject is stupid," I said. She followed me down the stairs, her heels clicking against the uneven wooden steps.

"We'll see about that." 

We made our way past the second floor, where Mabli's room was located. I noticed her bedroom door open; Norahi was sitting on her bed next to her. She was crying.

"Is everything alright?" I asked. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," said Norah insistently. She was holding a box of tissues on her lap and Mabli plucked them to wipe her eyes and nose, one right after another

"Are you sure?" I said more softly. I felt Jeannie's presence behind me as she came through Norah's doorway.

"She's fine," said Norah. "Just under the weather. That's all."

Mabli sniffed. She blinked the tears away from her reddish eyes and looked at me, but said nothing.

"What's going on?" asked Jeannie.

"Nothing," insisted Norah. "We're fine." 

Mabli didin't look fine. I knew she had been feeling ill several days before, but I had assumed she had a cold.

"Alright," I said cautiously. "Well...Jeannie and I need to go."

I stepped forward tentatively. "Mabli, if you need to talk—"

"It's okay," she sputtered, her voice sounding weird and thick. "I'm fine."

Jeannie's eyes were boring into the back of my head. I knew she was balancing her newfound curiosity about Mabli with her unrelenting desire to interrogate me about Lyall. Ultimately, Lyall must have won.

"Hope, we need to get going," she said. "We're going to be late."

"Alright." I turned around and followed her out, being careful to close Mabli's bedroom door shut behind me.

We dressed in our coats and scarves, Jeannie in her cream-coloured gloves.

"I love those," I commented, as we strolled down the street.

"Do you? I got them half-price at Bingham's," she replied. "I can get you another pair."

"Oh, that's alright." I laughed. "I couldn't pay you back."

"As a gift!" Jeannie insisted. "Really. You're only doing me a favour; they're having a buy-one, get-one half off."

"Maybe." I smiled. Jeannie earned more than me, and received tips as well. Because she still lived at home and had no rent or grocery expenses, she had a good amount of disposable income, which she disposed of rather liberally. Her major expense was clothing, followed by make-up, perfume and magazines. There was only one thing Jeannie refused to spend money on; the cinema. "Why would I spend my own money on that, when I could have a boy take me?" she always said. Jeannie thought I was very silly for going to the cinema by myself when there were more "economical" ways to see a film.

We arrived at the diner ten minutes later then we were supposed to.

"Don't worry about a thing," Jeannie assured me, though I felt guilty. "Men are supposed to wait."

"I'm not sure they know that," I said, as we entered the vestibule and hung up our coats.

"Ooh, is that him?" she whispered into my ear, and nodded towards a handsome man with a cigarette who was sitting alone at a table for four. 

"I'm afraid not. Lyall doesn't smoke." 

"Oh." Jeannie tried not to sound too disappointed. She peered around at the diner, a cozy restaurant decorated with framed and signed pictures of semi-famous locals who had eaten there. The booths were red vinyl and the tables an awkwardly mismatched coral. In those days, people didn't bring childrens to restaurants very often, but quite a few families took their kids to Malcolm's Diner, especially for Sunday brunch.

"Maybe I am a little overdressed," admitted Jeannie.

"Didn't I tell you?"

"Only a little," said Jeannie. "It's called dressing up for a reason."

I stood on my tiptoes and peered over the heads of booth tops, trying to spot Lyall. He was always punctual; given that we were late, there was next to no chance that he wouldn't be there. But I couldn't seem to find him anywhere.

"Where is he?" asked Jeannie.

"I don't know," I said. "Shall we have a look?"

She followed me as I awkwardly walked through the diner, dodging waitresses with enormous trays and spotty teenage busboys.

When it seemed as though we had walked past every table twice, Jeannie said, "See? I told you we weren't late."

"Maybe we're too late. Maybe's he's left," I worried aloud.

"I don't think he has," said a reedy voice somewhere by my elbow. I turned around, and there he was, sitting at a small round table, folding up a book and tucking it into his briefcase.

"Oh. Hi." I blushed, for no particular reason. "Well...this is Lyall," I said, addressing Jeannie though I was looking directly at him.

"I'm Jeannie," she said gaily, extending her hand to his.

He glanced towards her, then me, and then back at her before shyly shaking her hand. I knew what he was thinking; people always did a double-take when they saw us together for the first time, for we looked so alike.

"You must be Lyall. Hope has said so many nice things about you," said Jeannie. I could have smacked her. Evidently, Jeannie had anticipated this thought, because she sat down in a chair just out of the range of my armspan as soon as she finished speaking.

"Oh," said Lyall softly. "Well." He looked down at the table, avoiding eye contact with me.

"I'm sorry we're late," I said, and sat down, slinging my purse across the back of the chair. "I must have lost track of time."

"It's alright. I didn't notice."

"Oh." Despite my previous guilt, I felt somewhat disappointed.

"Well, tell me everything about how you met," Jeannie said bubbly, breaking an awkward silence that had fallen between us. "Hope said you saved her life!"

Lyall smiled faintly and shook his head, still not looking up from the pink Mac-Tac of the tabletop ."That, er—it really wasn't that dramatic."

"It was very dramatic to me," I said.

"Hope said a man was following her and trying to kidnap her," Jeannie said. "She said you chased him off."

Lyall looked up from the table, opened his mouth and then closed it again.

"I suppose that's...one interpretation," he said.

Jeannie giggled. Lyall looked unsure of whether she was laughing with him or at him.

"Shall we get food?" I chimed in. "I'm absolutely famished."

"Me too," agreed Jeannie. "Let's see the menu." 

"The portions here are very large, I'm warning you," I said, handing her a menu laminated in greasy plastic. "We could share something."

"I don't know," Jeannie mused, perusing the pages. "You don't like blueberry pancakes."

"What about the French toast with sliced bananas?" I said.

Jeannie pouted childishly. "But I want the blueberry pancakes."

"You won't finish them. I never finish anything here."

"Well, maybe you can share something with Lyall," Jeannie suggested, shooting Lyall a glance which he did not return.

"Oh, I don't know about that," I said. "Lyall likes to eat."

"But you just said the portions here are very large."'

"Well—maybe not that large," I laughed.

"Are you implying something?" said Lyall very quietly. For a moment, I thought he was serious, and then I saw the slight twitch of his eyebrows.

"Not at all," I said, smiling. "Maybe you do want to share something."

"I don't think that's going to work," said Lyall dryly. "Not at half-past eleven when I haven't eaten since last night.'

I turned to Jeannie. "Why don't we get French toast and you can have blueberries on the side? I don't want to spend twice as much if we aren't even going to finish." 

"I guess," said Jeannie, not bothering to hide her disappointment. "Maybe I'll just get toast, then." 

"It's alright," said Lyall. "Hope, you get what you like and your sister can have the blueberry pancakes. It's, er..." He grasped his fork suddenly and twirled it in his fingers, studiously eyeing the tines. "My treat," he added, his voice soft. We made eye contact for a brief moment, and then he looked back down at the fork in his hand.

"You can't," I insisted. "Jeannie's my guest and I'm paying tonight," I said. I felt a foot strike my ankle under the table—it was Jeannie, being unsubtle, as usual.

Lyall shook his head. "No, no—it wouldn't feel right."

"It's very kind of you to offer, but we can't impose like that, right Jeannie?"

"Well," said Jeannie, choosing her words more carefully than usual. "Lyall is being very kind, and I don't think it would be right to embarrass him by not allowing him to be a gentleman," she said, sounding very dignified. "Don't you agree?"

Before I could say anything in response, Lyall cleared his throat and said, "Well, that's settled." I decided not to protest any further. Jeannie flashed him a brilliant smile; in response, he quickly averted his eyes and looked slightly flushed. 

Jeannie flagged a waitress down. After she took our orders—she must have memorized them, for she had no pen and pad, which was quite impressive, given the number of diners—Jeannie relaxed against the vinyl padding of the booth and asked Lyall what he did for a living.

"I told you, he does research," I said.

"Well, I wanted to hear from him," she replied. "I'm sure you know a lot more about it than Hope does."

"I suppose so," said Lyall.

"Hope says you study animals."

"I—" he paused. "I suppose you could put it that way." 

"Lyall studies migration patterns," I said, trying to be helpful.

"Do you work at the University of Cardiff?" asked Jeannie, twirling a lock of hair around her fingers. 

Just as Lyall shook his head, the waitress arrived to pour us coffee. Jeannie stirred two packets of sugar into hers; I added one packet of sugar, and enough milk to turn the coffee light caramel. I noticed Lyall watching me; when I looked up at him, he shook his head with mild disapproval. We had joked before about my coffee preferences; he believed I was ruining a perfectly good cup of coffee by soiling it with so much milk. 

"So," said Lyall softly, as stirred one half-packet of sugar into his mug. "Do you work?" 

"Yes, I'm a hairdresser," said Jeannie. "I work at a salon."

"She hates it if you call it a barber shop," I said cheekily.

"Aren't barbers for men?" said Lyall.

"Yes, exactly," Jeannie said. "Barbers only cut hair, but hairdressers style it. I'm a trained beautician," she said, barely concealing the pride she held in her newfound diploma. 

"I'm afraid I'm...not very familiar with that line of work," said Lyall with the hint of a smile. 

Jeannie laughed. "Ned said that too."

"That's her boyfriend," I said, and added, "Jeannie's a beautician."

"And what does being a beautician entail?" asked Lyall. "Other than hairdressing."

"Oh, it's all sort of things," said Jeannie. "Make-up, nails, waxing. That sort of thing."

"And what is waxing for?" asked Lyall quite earnestly, before taking a sip of coffee.

Jeannie and I looked at each other for a long moment. Holding in the laughter was nearly unbearable, but we managed to stay silent. A muffled crash sounded as several dishes broke in the kitchen.

I turned to face Lyall. "Just another beauty thing," I said brightly. "Well, I am so hungry, I could just eat a horse!"

"Me too. I am famished!" Jeannie declared, and with that, we both burst into uncontrollable giggles, leaving Lyall to sit awkwardly, with a bewildered expression, wondering what exactly he had done. 

* * *

We parted after brunch, leaving Lyall to "take the bus" back to his place. He offered to get us a cab back to the house, but I assured him we were well within walking distance. Usually after one of our outings, Lyall and I would shyly dance around the subject of our next meeting, until one of us would finally ask the other to go out again. This time though, we parted without mentioning it.

"Thank you for breakfast," said Jeannie. "It was delicious."

"Yes, it was excellent," I said. "I'm sorry I didn't finish—"

"Quite alright," he murmured, looking at the ground. "I'm glad you enjoyed it."

"I did." Our eyes met briefly and I saw my reflection in his pupils; my cheeks were already turning rosy from the cold. He suddenly seemed to realize we were standing very close together, and took a step back.

"Have a nice time with your sister," he said quickly.

"Thank you." I could feel Jeannie's eyes boring into my side.

As soon as Jeannie and I had walked out of earshot, I decided to get it over with.

"Well. Aren't you going to give me your impressions?"

Jeannie paused for a moment, and then we stepped apart to allow a woman pushing a baby carriage to pass between us. There were so many, in those days; I remember, during the war, when you never saw babies anywhere.

"Does he really not know what waxing is?" Jeannie blurted.

"He doesn't have any sisters," I said with a giggle.

"But he has a mother, doesn't he?"

"I don't think his mother would do that sort of thing in front of him," I said. From the little I knew of Lyall's family at that time, it seemed as though his sense of propriety was as much learned as it was innate.

"Hasn't he had a girlfriend?"

"When would you ever talk to your boyfriend about that?" I said incredulously. "Nobody brings that up with their boyfriend."

"No, I guess not."

"Anyways," I added, "he definitely didn't know what it was, because I know Lyall and he never would have mentioned it if he had known what it was."

"Yes, he does seem that way, doesn't he?" said Jeannie. "Maybe that's why you haven't made any progress." 

"There's no progress to be made."

"Oh, please, Hope. You know I'm not stupid," Jeannie insisted, as we rounded the corner and spotted the chimney of Saint Dwynyn's peeking out above the shorter rooftops down the street.

"We aren't like that." 

"You're exactly like that." 

"No, we aren't!"

"So you're saying you don't like him?" said Jeannie cynically.

"I'm saying that's—it's just not how things are. We're just friends. People can be friends."

"No, they can't," she stated. "And you aren't, anyways."

"Yes, we are!"

"Hope," she said, sounding exasperated. "Don't you know some boys like for you to make the first move?"

"What makes you so convinced that I like him that way?" I countered, fishing for my house keys in my purse. Up ahead, on the front porch, I noticed a slim figure smoking a cigarette. It was either Norah or Irene; Val was much too busty and the other girls too short. 

"Well, for one, you get much too sensitive when I bring it up."

"Maybe that's because you're too insistent, and you're driving me crazy with trying to make a romance novel out of everything!"

"I just—" Jeannie suddenly stopped talking as we reached the front porch and realized it was Irene standing there. Her coat was draped over her shoulders, but her arms were not in the sleeves; one hand was tucked around her waist for warmth, the other dangling a smoldering cigarette over the railing.

She eyed Jeannie disdainfully and her cherry-red lips parted to exhale a white cloud.

Please don't say anything, I silently pleaded to Jeannie.

My sister seemed to have heard my prayer, for she kept her head down and silently climbed the steps and passed Irene, waiting for me to unlock the door. I could feel Irene's eyes boring into the back of my head as I hastily turned the key. Jeannie followed me in and we climbed upstairs, heading to my room.

On the second floor landing, a soft, slightly muffled voice called my name. 

"Hope? Hope, is that you?"

It was coming from behind Mabli's door, which was just nearly closed. A ray of light spilled from the tiny opening, illuminating the dusty rose-patterned carpet of the landing. 

I carefully opened the door and peered in. Norah was still sitting on Mabli's bed, just as she had been that morning. I noticed a tin kidney dish on the floor next to her. Mabli was no longer sitting and crying; she was pacing back and forth, riffling through a tiny address book.

"Can you come in for a moment?" asked Norah.

"Er...my sister's here—"

"It's fine," said Mabli flatly. "I don't care. I don't see as it matters much, anyway." When she looked at me, I noticed she wore no make-up; though she was dressed in day clothes, her puffy face and bare feet gave me the impression she had just gotten out of bed.

Jeannie walked in behind me and gave my forearm a gentle, inquisitve touch, like a question mark. I subtly shook my head.

"We—we wanted to know if you could help," said Norah quietly.

"Help how?"

Norah and Mabli looked at each other plaintively.

"Close the door," Mabli said hoarsely.

Jeannie shut the door quietly. Mabli looked at her with a challenging expression and crossed her arms over her chest. Her blond hair was lank and unstyled; she had pulled it back into a haphazard half-ponytail, but pieces had drifted down and framed her face asymetrically, like tattered lace curtains.

Norah spoke up. "Mabli's...Mabli's in trouble."

"In trouble with who?" I asked.

"Hope," Jeannie chastized me, sounding as though she knew more than I did.

Mabli and Norah looked at each other again.

"A boy got her into trouble," Norah clarified.

"...oh."

We all stood in silence for a moment, Jeannie and I awkwardly waiting without any idea of what to say or do. 

"It wasn't my fault," said Mabli. "It's..." she sniffled, "It's a long story."

"You have to promise you won't say anything to anyone," said Norah. "Mabli could get kicked out. Or worse."

"I won't," I promised.

"Don't say anything to Irene, or Val or anyone else. You know they won't keep a secret," she added.

I knew. Val was too stupid to keep a secret, while Irene was constitutionally incapable of not using other people's secrets against them.

"What are you going to do?" I asked. "Will he marry you?" 

Mabli shook her head sadly. "He says it isn't his, but I know it is."

"Can you go somewhere—stay somewhere—"

"I don't know," Mabli sighed. She stopped pacing and leaned against the wall, throwing her head back. A strand of hair stuck to her sweaty forehead. "I thought Norah could help, since she's a nurse—"

"I'm not a nurse yet—" interrupted Norah. "And anyways...I don't know of anyone." She looked at me. "That's why we're asking you.

"Well, I...I don't know," I said, feeling helpless. An orphan with no family, Mabli couldn't simply go stay with relatives. "Maybe you could go back and stay at a home for unw—for people like you." 

"No!" Mabli exclaimed. "No. I can't."

"They'll be furious," said Norah. "There's no way."

"It's not that," said Mabli. "I just—I don't want this. It. I don't want to have it."

Jeannie stepped forward. "You could get a procedure," said suggested, her voice quiet and solemn. "My friend had one. Maybe I could get you a telephone number."

"Jeannie, that's illegal!" I chastised.

"I'm only saying."

"You could get in a lot of trouble for that," I said. It concerned me that she would even know of such a person off the top of her head. It made me nervous to think she might have even gone with her friend for the procedure. In those days, you never knew about those doctors. Sometimes it was just a scam for money; other times, it was far worse. Getting arrested wasn't even the worst that could happen. 

"That's what I want," said Mabli. "But I don't know how much it would cost. I probably couldn't afford it."

"Maybe he'll pay for it," said Norah.

"I told you, he swears it isn't his!"

"You could tell him if he doesn't pay then you'll try and take him to court for support," said Norah.

"He'll never believe I could," Mabli said glumly. "If I can't afford this, how could I afford a solicitor?" Her eyes were shiny with fresh tears.

"They might take the money in installments," said Jeannie. "I mean...all the girls they see are in your situation, they must have some kind of arrangement for that." 

"Not all of them," said Norah. "A lot of married women do it too, and they have the money."

"My friend wasn't married, and she didn't have a lot of money either," said Jeannie.

"Please," begged Mabli. "Can you...get me something? A phone number, an address—something?"

"It will probably be in Aberystwyth or around there," said Jeannie.

"Hold on," I said. "Step out with me for a moment," I whispered to Jeannie.

"Do be quiet!" warned Norah. "Please."

Jeannie looked resentful, but followed me through the door. I closed it behind us.

"I don't like this," I whispered forcefully to her.

"I'm only trying to help!"

"I don't want you involved in this."

"I only made a suggestion," Jeannie insisted.

"Giving a telephone number for a—a you-know-what is more than a suggestion. It's helping her. And this isn't even your business." 

"Why are you so opposed?" she countered. "What else is Mabli supposed to do? Have the—have it all by herself with no husband and no money?"

"Whatever she does, I don't want you risking your own hide over it. She isn't even your friend. And this isn't even your home, and I promised Mam and Daddy I would look out for you."

"I didn't do anything wrong," she sulked. "And I'm not risking anything. Nobody is going to know. All I'll do is give the telephone number here to my friend and she can speak to Mabli and handle the rest. That's it. I won't even know anything, not really."

I paused, thinking it over. I felt shaken over the whole affair; the immediacy with which Mabli had transformed from a housemate with considerably more social clout than I to an object of pity. She wasn't the kind of girl who I would expect to find herself in this kind of trouble; maybe Val or Irene or Norah, but not her. Mabli wasn't the most well-behaved of girls, but she wasn't stupid, or deliberate seeker of drama. I knew she had had a boyfriend, but I had never seen him; I only knew when she was going out with him because she would leave the bathroom in a dense cloud of steam and perfume, her hair curled to within an inch of its life.

"Alright," I said. "You can give her your friend's number, but I don't want you involved in anything else."

"You're really being bossy again, Hope," she whined. "What gives you the right to tell me what to do?"

"You're in my house and this is my housemate!" I whispered as loudly as a person can whisper.

"You don't own her."

"No, I own the responsibility to not let you get into trouble with the law over someone else's problem!"

Jeannie and I came to a terse agreement, after which we returned to Mabli's room and Jeannie wrote down her friend's telephone number with Mabli's pink fountain pen.

"Remember," said Jeannie, "Just say you're a friend of Glynis and you want to talk. Don't mention...you know..."

"Of course not," Mabli snapped, "I'm not utterly stupid."

"You're welcome," retorted Jeannie with some contempt.

"Don't mind her," Norah assured us, "she's just...emotional, you know."

When Jeannie and I finally made our way to my room, neither of us were in good spirits, nor were we getting along very well. We spent a few hours relaxing and reading, not wanting to talk much. When we went to attend supper with the other girls, Mabli was not present.

That evening, Jeannie warmed up to me again and we chatted about the week. She didn't ask me about Lyall again, nor did I bring him up. Nobody wanted to talk about boys after Mabli's predicament. The whole topic seemed morbid and saddening. 

For the first time in a long while, I went to sleep without thinking of Lyall at all. Instead, I dreamed about nuns with long black habits and bony fingers; they were taking a baby away from me and it was crying. The nuns were putting him in a cot that looked like a jail; bars went over the top of it. Then the nuns were somehow nurses as well, and they all had white gloves on and they surrounded me; there was a lot of blood. Was it mine, or the baby's? I was lying on an operating table and I looked to my side; Jeannie was lying next to me in a bikini; she was sunbathing next to a transistor radio playing a popular song, something about the light of the silvery moon. I kept asking her where they had taken my baby, but but she mouthed something I couldn't hear. The baby was still howling, though I couldn't see it, and the song became louder and louder, as though to cover up the crying.

I awoke in the middle of the night drenched in a cold sweat, feeling very disturbed. Being careful not to wake Jeannie, I tiptoed out of bed and went to wash my face in the bathroom. There was Irene's shower cap, right next to the sink. I gazed idly at my pale face in the mirror, still feeling the insistent urge to search for my phantom baby. I've spent many years now looking, and I still haven't found him.


	8. Castle Arwyddion

The trees were entirely bare and swaying in the early winter's wind when Lyall and I met to visit a historic castle, now in partial ruins. Apparently, there was some dispute occurring between the National Trust and castle's current owners, the earl of something-or-other and his sister, both impoverished gentry with nothing but their titles and a hefty pile of estate taxes. The estate was in the process of being sold to the Trust but an entailment had complicated matters, the result being that for the past five years, the property had gone without maintenance by either party. The box hedges of the gardens were untrimmed, their shape only vaguely referencing what was once a rectangle. Vines and weeds spilled between the cobblestones of the walkway, while the prickly-thorned rose bushes—now leafless and budless due to the time of year—looked like something out of Sleeping Beauty's front yard. A sign nailed to the front door warned us that entry would be trespassing, which didn't seem to concern Lyall at all.

He had been to the Castle Arwyddion before and had thought that I would find its current state of abandonment romantic, in the 19th century sense. 

"Romantic?" I said, attempting to pry my kitten heel out from the muck between two flagstones. "Gothic, I would say."

"I thought you would like that too," said Lyall, who sounded disappointed. "Do you need help?"

"No, I've got it. I'll just watch my step from now on."

 We made our way up the wide stone steps of the portico, which were slippery with moss and fresh rain.

"It's pretty," I said. "I don't know that I would want to spend the night here, though. It looks haunted."

"It _is_ haunted," said Lyall automatically, before clapping a hand to his mouth. I suppose that's the sort of thing I should have picked up on, but at the time I assumed he was only concerned that I would be afraid if I knew there were ghost stories about the place.

"Haunted?" I said. "I thought you were a rationalist."

"I would say I am."

"Well, you don't believe in ghosts, do you?" I teased.

After a long moment, he said, "I believe in what I see."

"There's a lot more to the world than what you can see," I said.

Lyall did not reply. He fiddled with the iron ring that served as a door handle and finally managed to push the door in, tearing apart a spiderweb stretched across the inner doorframe in the process. A loud and lazy creak issued from the hinges. Lyall stepped inside, his body disappearing in the darkness;

"Are you sure it's alright to go in?" I asked. "I mean...it did say—"

"Don't worry about it," he said briskly. "I've been here before, with no trouble."

I wondered why on earth he had been inside this abandoned castle before, but didn't say. On faith, I followed him inside. It smelled musky and ancient; whiffs of evergreen and something wet and mouldy overlayed with the remains of a thousand smoky peat fires. 

"Your eyes will adjust," said Lyall quietly. He waited as I rubbed my eyes and tried looking around. As my pupils dilated, I realized it wasn't quite as dark as it had seemed. We were in a foyer with a stained-glass decorative window above the huge doors. It was cloudy with dust, but it allowed in enough light that I could see the grandiose curving staircase and several large doorways leading off to other rooms. On the floor, a carpet runner had clearly once resided but was long gone, leaving behind a slightly-less-filthy patch of flagstone floor.

"This place was probably beautiful," I said softly. "I mean, when it was occupied."

"It hasn't been in years," said Lyall. "You can imagine how much it must cost to run this place. The landscaping alone would be a fortune."

"But imagine living here. Walking down those steps every day...just imagine the view from the turret."

"Do you want to see it?" he asked.

"Can we?"

"I'll show you," he said. I followed him the grand staircase to a second floor hall, one side of which was completely open to the floor below. The railing was made of thick wooden bannisters, periodically anchored by posts that went to the ceiling above. I ran my fingers along one carved post and tried to interpret the designs, grooves and bumps that felt like illegible Braille and filled my fingertips with dust.

"Do you have a torch?" I asked. "It's awfully dark in here."

"I have a—well...I suppose I forgot to bring one," stammered Lyall. "I know I should have, I'm really sorry."

"It's alright," I said. "We'll just feel the walls, I guess."

"I can see a little bit," said Lyall, which surprised me since he obviously had much poorer eyesight than I did.

I followed him to a smaller corridor off the main hall, which was completely pitch-black.

"We're going to have to go down here, and then there will be a staircase with windows."

"Are you sure?" I asked, peering into the darkness. It was utterly black.

"Yes," he said. Lyall took a step towards the doorway and then turned around, realizing I had not followed him .

We looked at each other awkwardly, though we were barely able to see each other's expressions in the dim light.

"It's alright if you don't want to go," he said softly.

 "No—no, I'll go. I'm just a bit...afraid I'll get lost, and not be able to find you. I can't follow you very well in the dark."

 "You can, er, take my arm, if you'd like. If that would help," he added, quickly.

 "I would like to do that," I said, feeling very shy all of a sudden.

 Lyall offered me his forearm, and I laid a hand on it gently. His coat was tweed and nubbly. It must have been quite thick, because I could not feel the warmth of his body through it.

He guided me down the corridor, walking slowly. We did not speak; my holding his arm, and the darkness around us combined into an intimacy that deprived us of words. It was so quiet I could hear his breathing; the particular tenor and pattern that would eventually become the lullaby to which I would fall asleep every night.

Finally, he led me around a corner and bit of light became visible, slightly illuminating the draping of a tapestry on the wall.

"Here it is," said Lyall. There was a curving spiral staircase of stone before us, obviously the inner portion of a turret. We looked at each other in the fresh sunlight pouring through arrow slits high above. His mouth was a wide line, his lips slightly pressed together as though he was trying not to say something. I let go of his arm. He looked down at my hand's retreat. 

"Shall we go up?" I said.

"Yes," he murmured. "Careful. You know these things are built to trip you on the way up."

"Are they really?" I asked.

"Of course," said Lyall. "A castle is a fortress, as well as a home. It's designed to protect the inhabitants when they are under siege. The knights running _up_ the stairs are invading; the knights running down the stairs are defending themselves."

"Wow," I said sincerely as I followed him up. "You know so many things." The steps were very narrow; it was difficult to imagine a knight in full armour carrying a sword and sheath up the stairs.

"Only a few," he said.

"I think it's a lot."

"Well..."

We passed the first arrow slit. I had not realized how thick the stone walls of the castle were until I saw how deep the window was set.

"That's for arrows," said Lyall.

"Yes, I do know that," I said. "I wanted to live in a castle when I was little, though I never thought of it as a fortress. I thought it would be like a fairytale. But I guess they're really...not very nice places to live in. At least, not in the towers."

Lyall, who had turned around to watch me look out the slit, looked amused.

"What's so funny?" I asked.

 "Nothing," he said, and yet his mouth had broadened into a smirk.

"You look like I said something funny."

"No, no," he said. "Come. Let's go up, it's a nice view at the top."

I followed him, beginning to huff and puff as we continued to climb with no end in sight. When I began to question whether the unbroken spiral, which gave no indication of how many storeys we had climbed or where one began or ended, would ever lead anywhere, we finally reached the opening into a circular stone room.

It had clearly been renovated, not recently, but certainly long after the medieval period. A ceiling had been installed that was patterned with oak panels, and two chairs with moth-eaten upholstery were sitting opposite each other, as if in conversation. The windows had been filled with glass, which was now cracked and broken in some parts. A ragged carpet was stained with water damage.

I wandered to the window and looked out. Lyall was right; it did have a beautiful view. In the distance, I could see the houses and shops of Cardiff bordered by leafless grey-brown trees. Closer to the castle, I saw the untended garden and curtain wall with its wrought-iron gate.

"There's no moat," I said, cheekily.

"What a shame," said Lyall. "Otherwise, I was going to buy it for you, but I suppose it won't do..."

I giggled, perhaps less at the ridiculous notion of Lyall buying a castle and more at the queer feeling it gave me to imagine us buying any kind of house together.

"I like it up here," I said. "I might do a bit of spring cleaning, but it would make a wonderful place to read."

"Yes, I thought so too when I was here before," said Lyall. He came over to look out through the same window as me. We stood close together but self-consciously not touching in any way.

"It's the kind of place you would go to when you want to be alone," I breathed.

"There's two chairs," he said softly. 

"Or, _almost_ alone."

We stood silent for several minutes, the quiet only broken once by a hawk's cry outside.

"Do you like this place?" he finally asked.

"Of course," I said, with enthusiasm. "It's...well, it just feels really enchanting, do you know what I mean?"

He took out his handkerchief and coughed into it several times before saying, "I thought of you when I came here the first time."

"That was nice of you."

"Mmm." He placed a hand against the glass, and stared at it as though it was more interesting than the view through the window. His hand looked very dark, backlit by the sunlight. His fingernails were wide and clipped quite short. 

I don't know just what made me say it at that moment. It was completely irrelevant and out of the blue, but I blurted out, "There's a girl I live with who's in an awful predicament, and I don't know how to help. Or if I can." 

Lyall was a bit taken aback at this sudden intrusion into what had been a very mild chat. He stepped back a bit from me, and asked, "May I ask what sort of predicament?"

"She's—she's gotten—well," I backtracked, "I don't know how to say this politely."

"You may say it impolitely, then. I won't tell," Lyall assured me, with the hint of a smile.

I was already breaking my promise to Mabli and Norah that I wouldn't tell a soul, although I didn't see how it could matter very much to Lyall. It wasn't as though he knew her, or knew anyone else who did.

I took a breath. "She's...going to have a baby, but she isn't married."

Lyall looked down modestly and said, "Ah. I see." 

"Yes." 

"And I suppose—the father won't marry her."

I shook my head. "She said he says it isn't his."

"Oh."

We stood in a terribly awkward silence. I had no idea what had pushed me to bring the subject up, and now I deeply regretted it.

"Perhaps she could go and stay with family," Lyall suggested quietly. He looked a bit pale. I noticed he was clutching his handkerchief.

"She can't," I said. "She has none."

"No family?" he asked, sounding surprised.

"She's an orphan," I said. "She was a ward of the Crown."

 Lyall exhaled sharply. "Goodness," he said quietly, more to himself than me. "That's a relief."

 "What? It's awful! How is she going to get by?"

"No, no, I meant—of course it's awful," he said. "Quite. I only—er—well, I only thought...perhaps—" 

"You thought her family would be angry?" 

"Er, well—no," he said shakily. "I thought...perhaps she was you."

I took a step back, my face turning pink. Lyall would not meet my eyes; his hands were folded tightly together against his stomach and his feet were pressed together, statue-like in his embarrassment. 

"You that I meant me?" I said. "You really thought—" 

"No—no, no, I didn't think—I mean, it's not as though you _look_ —I just—" 

"I would never do that," I said. "And you know I'm not seeing anyone. And—Lyall, how could you think such a thing of me?"

I felt my eyes sting with the beginnings of tears. He looked terribly guilty, but I felt even worse. That Lyall would take me for such a girl—it was humiliating. I couldn't even look at him anymore.

When he spoke, his voice was quavering with some repressed emotion.

"I'm terribly embarrassed. I really didn't mean to upset you."

I sniffed and crossed my arms over my chest. The room suddenly felt cold; a chill was pressing through the cracked windows.

"Hope," Lyall said, very quietly. "Please. I only thought—that perhaps—you might be asking for help," he said. I could hear the friction of rubbing fabric as he twisted his handkerchief compulsively. "Now, I know that you aren't, but I was...well, I was glad you would think to ask me...because I would, you know, I would help. If—if you needed it, which you don't, but...if you did." 

I inhaled deeply and swallowed a mouthful of air. His soft, nasal voice was soothing to me, despite my shame and his obvious embarrassment. 

"It's alright," I said. "I know—you didn't mean it that way. And I suppose it...it may have sounded as though—I may have given the wrong impression." I looked up at him; his brow was knit into a pained expression.

"Hope," he said hoarsely. "I, er—just forget I said it. Really. That would be best." He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He changed the subject rapidly. Would you like to see the courtyard?" 

"There's a courtyard?"

"Yes," he said. "And the keep, of course, in the centre. I can show you," he offered, plainly trying to shift my focus away from our unpleasant exchange.

"Please do."

I followed him back down the spiral stairs, peeking out the arrow slit for only a moment. When we reached the dark corridor, he offered his arm to me and I took it without speaking.

Back on the dark and dusty second floor of the great hall, Lyall began to pull something that looked long and narrow from a pocket inside his coat, but quickly put it began when he realized I was looking at him.

He cleared his throat. "We'll have to go downstairs again, I'm afraid."

"Yes, I expected so."

I followed him down the curving staircase, and down a hall on the main floor. Ancient tapestries seemed to cough up clouds of dust as we passed them.

"How do you know the layout of this place?" I asked.

"Er...I came here before. Just wanted to see the place," Lyall replied. "I was...curious."

Of course, what Lyall had actually been curious about had been reports of several Boggarts that had been plaguing the property for years, doing no small part in driving away any potential buyers other than the National Trust, but he couldn't exactly tell me that.

The courtyard was as run-down as the castle's interior, but it was much less gloomy. Browning foliage spilled out of the garden patch, and vines crawled up and over the edge of an Edwardian-era fountain. Some sort of stone statue was unidentifiable, its body and face completely fuzzed over in moss. The trees were beautiful; gnarled and weathered yews, their wavy trunks folding in and out like draped cloth on a marble statue. Though it was November, I could imagine how the courtyard must have looked in the summer; riotously green, buzzing with insects and overwhelmed by wildflowers and weeds alike.

Lyall sat down on a stone bench with claw-shaped feet. I remained on my feet, wandering from bush to flowerbed to moulding, leaf-filled birdbath.

"This is amazing," I murmured. "I hope the government opens it up to visitors."

"Maybe," said Lyall. "I would hate to see a place like this get renovated to oblivion and turn into a conference hall for corporate functions."

"With linoleums floors and Mac-Tac to protect the the dining room table?" I added, laughing.

"Precisely," he said. 

"They might even put in an intercom," I said. "Wouldn't that be awful?"

 Lyall paused at the word 'intercom,' and then said, "Criminal."

"I do love old places," I said wistfully, as I trailed a hand along the mossy edge of the birdbath. The leaves collected inside fluttered as they brushed my fingertips. "It would be a nice setting for a wedding, too." 

"Are you planning one?" asked Lyall wryly. 

"Not just yet," I said. "Unless you think I should start with the place settings and leave choosing a groom for the week before." 

"I wouldn't recommend it," he said. "If you don't book far in advance, all the nice ones will probably be taken."

"Sometimes I worry they already are," I confessed. When I glanced at him, he was looking down at a dried out leaf he held, slowly rolling the stem between thumb and forefinger.

"Well...I suppose you only need one," Lyall said slowly.

"But they're awfully hard to find in stores," I said.

"No," he shook his head, smiling mildly. "I don't think you'll find a groom there."

"I don't suppose you're looking to get married anytime soon," I said. "I mean...unless you're seeing someone." I didn't know why it felt so odd to say something conversational like that, but as soon as I spoke, I felt embarrassed. 

Lyall pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "I am not," he said slowly. "Although it's...not for lack of interest." 

"No?"

He shook his head. Without looking at me, he said, "It's more like...lack of opportunity."

"Me too," I commiserated, as I joined him on the stone bench.

"Now, I doubt that's true," Lyall said. "You said that you work in an office around plenty of men." 

"Most of them are married," I pointed out, "and the ones that aren't are—well, it hasn't worked out." 

"Worked out?" said Lyall, sounding curious. "So you've, er—you've tried...?" 

I felt my face glow red, and tried hastily to correct Lyall's assumptions. "I've only gone on a few dates. First dates," I stammered. "And nothing happened."

"I wouldn't assume that anything would happen," he said softly. 

"The problem was, I felt nothing," I confessed. "And I wanted to feel something—anything—but I didn't feel anything at all. And they were very nice men."

"It can't be forced," mused Lyall. "Or forced away...I don't know which is worse." 

He looked pensive, absorbed in twirling his little leaf, although his mind was somewhere else. 

Forced away. So he liked someone, or had liked someone, and it hadn't worked out. I suppose I could understand that; he wasn't the sort of man who would appeal to all women. I could never imagine Val, or Mabli or Norah ever being attracted to somebody like him (perhaps Irene, but only because she preferred men that were easy to take advantage of). I was more curious about who it was he fancied (had fancied?) and why.

But it answered the question of why he so often seemed glum. He was never rude and he didn't complain, but there was something about him that always made me wonder.

"I know things will work out for you, in the end," said Lyall, breaking the silence.

"I do hope so."

"I know they will," he said, though his voice sounded rather less confident than could be desired. "I know you'll find someone and get married, and have your family, and all of that."

"I wish it were that simple," I sighed.

"It is, though," he muttered. "It is for other people. It is for everyone except me."

I was surprised by this statement; it sounded uncharacteristically self-pitying, narcissistic even. At the time, it seemed to me very unlike him; it is only after years of marriage that I have come to know those dark parts of Lyall which exist in all of ourselves, locked underneath layers of social custom and upbringing and which only reveal themselves to our most intimate companions. That he would let slip something so private and self-abnegating to me on that day in the castle courtyard was perhaps a sign that our souls were already beginning to interlock. 

"I'm sure that isn't true," I said. "But I know it can feel that way."

"I guess you're right," he said. "You must forgive me. I know it was intolerably rude." 

I laughed artificially, sounding very shrill. "Don't worry."

"No—no, I've been terribly rude today. Twice now," he insisted. "I don't know what's gotten into me."

"It happens to the best of us," I said. I felt a strong urge to touch his arm, to give him some reassurance, but it seemed inappropriate.

"I think I could make it up to you, though," said Lyall. "I mean—if you'd like." 

"What do you mean?" I asked, curious.

"Well," he paused, and took a deep breath. "It's just that some of my friends are going to a—an event—a mixer, if you will."

"A mixer?"

"It's a dance," he clarified. "At a dance hall. I wasn't really going to go..." 

"But do you _want_ to go?" I asked. I suspected dance parties were not really Lyall's forte.

Lyall looked up at me for the first time in quite a while; his eyes looked hazel in the diffuse afternoon light. We were sitting so close together I could see the tiny follicles of his shaven jaw. 

"I'd like to go if you'd like to go," he said. "As friends."

"I would love to go," I breathed. "It sounds like so much fun—and I haven't had a night out since Jeannie was here."

"It is formal though," Lyall warned me. "If that makes any difference to you."

"I love to dress up!"

The tips of his mouth were beginning to turn up; he seemed quite cheered, in his own subtle way.

"It's not this Saturday, but next," he said. "At eight o'clock. I could have you back by eleven."

"Eleven is perfect," I said, though I absolutely despised my curfew in that moment. 

"Very well then," he said. He nodded towards a small, ivy-covered outbuilding with a moulding thatched roof. "Shall we have a look at the stables?"

* * *

 

That evening, I rifled through my closet, looking for something acceptable to wear to the dance. The bridesmaid dress I had worn to my friend Eula' wedding reception was at home in Aberystwyth, so it would have to be the pale yellow lace dress I had purchased four years ago for my school's Spring Formal. With its small puffed sleeves and modest bateau neckline, I wondered if it was a bit dowdy. We had a dress code at school that had to be obeyed, but going to a dance hall in your twenties was entirely different. Most of the women then would probably be wearing strapless dresses, or low-cut necklines at the very least. Still, I had no choice but to wear it as it was, as the lace appliqué was too complex for me to alter.       

I didn't mention the dance to any of the girls in my house. It wasn't just that I didn't want them to hear about it and then decide to go themselves (although that was part of my reasoning.) There was a gloomy mood in the house. Mabli was the source of it, but it was radiating outward, through Norah and I, who knew her troubles, and past that to the other girls, who were ignorant. Only Edith seemed unaffected. In fact, she seemed cheerier than she ever had been. On Wednesday, she arrived at supper late, and despite being thoroughly chastised by Mrs. Owens, she remained in high spirits, cordially asking every single person how their day had been and whether they noticed the lovely weather.

"My day was wretched," complained Irene. "Frances was late to cover me so I missed half my lunch. And nobody I helped mentioned me at the counter, so I won't be making any commissions."

"Yes, to be late when people are waiting for you is abominably rude," Mrs. Owens agreed pointedly, shooting a look at Edith. Irene seemed somewhat comforted by this expression of shared grievance, or perhaps she merely took joy in the aggression directed towards Edith, who was usually the favourite of both matrons.

"How have you been?" Edith asked me.

"Same as usual," I said, helping myself to another ladle full of cauliflower soup. "I never do the copying right, but I didn't make any typing errors today, so there is that." 

"I think it's practically heroic, what _you_ do," drawled Irene. "I would simply die of boredom if I had to work at an estates office, but I suppose some people are suited to that sort of work." 

"It's an insurance agency," I said coldly. "And I suppose the work _is_ dreadfully dull for people who have no imagination whatsoever."

"Doesn't it pay well, though?" asked Val, who was completely oblivious, as usual.

"Oh, it pays better than some jobs," Irene said airily. "Of course, you aren't going to make the sort of money you would earn in sales, but not everyone has that kind of motivation."

"All I know is I'm earning more than I would as a sales girl with _no_ commissions," I replied.

"Girls," chided Mrs. Winchfill. "I think that's quite enough." She patted at her mouth primly with a napkin. "It's gauche to talk about money."

"I quite agree," said Mrs. Owens. "And I really don't see why you young girls are so obsessed with trying to get promotions and make more money when you should be focussing on more important things, like finding a proper husband."

 Norah made a half-coughing, half-choking noise, and hid her smile behind a napkin.

"I'd like to get married," said Val dreamily, as she swirled the mashed potatoes around her plate with her fork. "I already know what kind of dress I want."

Mrs. Owens clucked with disapproval. "It's not about dresses, or spending a fortune on those big parties" she said, completely oblivious to the fact that she had declared money an inappropriate subject for discussion roughly thirty seconds ago. "The important thing is that you find a husband who will look after you so you can have children."

With a great thump, Mabli plopped her glass down heavily onto the table. A screech issued from her chair when it scraped backwards across the floorboards. She stood up, hands folded before her. 

"I am not feeling well," she said coldly. "May I be excused." It wasn't a question.

"I don't think that—" began Mrs. Winchfill, but Mabli had already stalked out of the dining room and down the hall before she could finish her sentence. The matrons, Irene, Val and Edith all looked at one another in complete bewilderment; Norah and I stared down at our plates.

"Well," huffed Mrs. Winchfill. "I'm sure Mabli will apologize for her behaviour when she is feeling better."

"I'm sure she didn't meant to be rude," said Edith charitably.

"Rudeness is not a matter of intention, but of action," recited Mrs. Owens in a sing-song voice. It sounded like the sort of quote that came from one of the church programs she brought home on Sundays, printed with sermons and inspirational messages.

"I guess Mabli wouldn't agree," said Irene. "Some people just don't see the same value in old-fashioned manners. Still, it's a shame she left so abruptly," she cooed in a sickly-sweet voice. "It's chocolate cake for pudding."

"There will be no pudding for her after a performance like that," Mrs. Winchfill said sharply. 

We spent the rest of dinner listening to Mrs. Owens and Mrs. Winchfill complain about the way young girls these days had no sense of morality, no manners and far too many ambitions. Occasionally, Irene egged them on, if only to torment the rest of us while -re-securing her place as the matrons' second favourite. Her recent argument with Jeannie had upset the balance of power in the house hierarchy, and Irene did not like that. Edith had always been the favourite of the matrons, because she was so quiet and self-sacrificing and perfectly well-behaved. (It also didn't hurt that, according to Norah, she came from money.) There was no beating out Edith for first place, but Irene generally held second, because she knew how to suck-up and did so as frequently as possible.

After dinner, on my way up the stairs, I heard Norah sneak into Mabli's room. I only heard a few murmured words and a muffled sob before the door clicked shut. I paused on the steps, not knowing if I should knock or go on my way. When I chose to continue on to my room, I tried to console my guilty conscience with the knowledge that Norah was in there with Mabli, and she was a much closer friend anyways. And the reality was that Mabli had never _really_ been a friend of mine. Certainly, she ran with a very different crowd. They were what my mother would call "fast." had gotten the sense, on more than one occasion, that Mabli had thought me rather a stick-in-the-mud. But I had never hoped things would come to this.

When I saw my yellow dress on its hanger, hooked over my open closet door, I cheered up considerably, thinking of Lyall and the upcoming dance. It had been so long since I last went to a real dance, with boys there—going out with Jeannie didn't count. Lyall had said there were going to be a lot of his friends there, as well as people he went to school with. When I look back at those days now, I wonder why I never questioned how strange it was that so many of Lyall's former classmates should be attending multiple social events in Cardiff, when he had gone to school way up north of Inverness. _Muggles don't notice very much, do they?_ his father had once commented, and though I knew it was a passive jab at me, I can't help but conceding the point.

I was such a silly, naive little thing. My head was in the clouds. I noticed only what interested me, and ignored the rest. Lyall, my petty squabbles at the house, my records, the latest Hollywood news and my novels were the only things I paid attention to. Mabli's unexpected pregnancy seemed like the absolute worst thing that could possibly happen. I don't know how I managed to attract Lyall, or what he saw in me. If I am strong now, it's only because of the fires I've walked through; if I am wise, it's only because I have been taught what so few people get to know. I have a child who is remarkable, even extraordinary, for his capacity to endure what would kill most people, and yet you only know of him because he taught a child who endured, and survived, even worse. Yet, here I am telling you _my_ story, and how strange it seems that there are people who want to hear it, when I always thought no one would ever care to hear about the fifties, when I wandered, and danced on air, and loved; but safely, sheltered behind the fortifications of my heart.


End file.
